My Semester at Sea Spring 2008 Adventure

Hola from Costa Rica!

2008-05-03T15:13:00.000-07:00

I found an internet cafe right next to the ship so I thought I would give a quick update on my time so far in Costa Rica....the last port before home....because I ran out of internet time on the ship and I´m not sure if it´s worth it to buy more minutes. So anyway this morning I went on my canopy adventure trip which was amazing. We drove about an hour to this place that was in a beautiful forrest and we got in line to get harnesses which ended up taking like two hours because they booked almost 150 people on this trip. So we finally got strapped in and put on our helmets and gloves and headed to the first zip line. I was really nervous at first because I have never been on a zip line before, but it was so much fun!! After the first one it was one after another and the final one was almost half a mile long and by far the most fun. Once it was done we took a gondola back to where we started and they had fresh fruit for us that was really good and then we took the bus back to the ship. Megan and I grabbed a quick bite to eat and then headed out into town and did soem shopping and found this little internet cafe for $2 an hour which isn´t bad. We´re hopefully going to find a nice place to eat for dinner and then I´m not sure what else I will do here. We have until 8 tomorrow and then we will be on our way to Miami! I can´t believe the trip is already over and I´m actually kind of nervous to be back home. But most of all I just can´t wait to see my family! I guess that´s all I have to say for now :)

Good news!

2008-04-30T18:45:00.000-07:00

I just got amazing news so I thought I would post a blog about it. I got invited to have ice cream cake with a group of friends because my friend Mason finished her last college class today and wanted to celebrate. This by itself was awesome, but while we were eating Megan handed me the Dean’s Memo to read. The Dean’s memo has the announcements of what’s going on each day on the ship. So anyway there was a little message at the bottom that said they had originally announced that students with straight A’s would be the first off the ship, but because they wouldn’t be able to calculate grades soon enough they are now switching it so that anyone who got A’s on the first three global studies tests will be the first off the ship. And guess who got a 90, 92 and 96 on the first three global studies tests? Me!! So this means I get off first and get to see my Mom and Bill extra early!! So that’s my exciting news, other than that I took my geology final today and I think I did pretty well. Now I just have to study my butt off for my finance final. Woohoo!

Aloha!!

2008-04-27T23:39:00.000-07:00

I set my alarm for six but I woke up at 5:45 and looked at the clock and figured there was no reason to go back to sleep and I was really excited to be in Hawaii so I got up and got ready. They started making announcements over the intercom at 6 for people to come up to the faculty and staff lounge to meet with immigration and customs. They got to my number by 6:20 and surprisingly it only took me 5 minutes to get through. All they did was check our face with our passport and then told us to have a nice day. After this I went to grab a quick breakfast at 6:30 and the line was out the door. They had gotten through all the students by the time we got done eating and had moved onto the crew, so Megan and I hurried to our rooms to grab our stuff and then we went to camp out at the gangway early in hopes of being the first ones of the ship because her Mom and Aunt were waiting just outside! There were only about 10 people down there and I was pretty sure we were going to get yelled at but then a lady walked in and said those of you waiting to get off we’re ready for you. So we all got in line real quick and then she changed her mind and said she had to wait for the official word or something. Then about 5 minutes later assistant dean Craig, aka “The Voice”, came down and we were able to get off before they made the announcement to rest of the ship that the ship was cleared and everyone could begin to get off.

So for the first time ever we were the first people to get off the ship. Which reminds me… at pre-port the night before we got to Hawaii they did a drawing for the order disembarkation in Miami! They did a raffle for the very first person off the ship which this guy Bryan won and then the Silver Sea which is faculty and life-long learners gets off next, followed by the Baltic Sea who won the sea Olympics. The rest of the seas were put in hat and Bryan drew the order and my sea will be the 5^th one off!! That’s about half way because I think there are 10 seas. So anyway back to Hawaii… We got off the ship and some girls that got off with us were literally kissing the ground. We walked through a building and through a gate and saw some of the parents waiting and then we saw Megan’s mom and her aunt and even though it wasn’t my own family I was still super excited and gave them hugs. They had a mini van so we hopped in and headed to their condo. The whole time they treated me like a part of the family and after being away from family for so long it was a great feeling. So we got to the condo and they had a washing machine and dryer so Megan got to wash clothes with Tide and I was super jealous because when we get our clothes back from the ship they never really seem clean. We made some phone calls since our cell phones actually worked and then we walked to JAMBA JUICE. This may sound like a typical day to anyone reading this, but to us this was something we had been dreaming about since about a week after we left. It was so surreal to be standing in Jamba Juice ordering a Mega Mango smoothie surround by other Americans. After this we walked through the international market and then through a hotel right onto Waikiki Beach and then walked along the beach until we got back to the condo. The water was so clear and beautiful I could have just stayed there all day if I had more time.

Once we got back to the condo we hung out a little longer and then piled back into the mini van to head to the north shore. Megan and I have wanted to find Mexican food for as long as I can remember and there is a place called Cholo’s on the north shore that we decided to go to for lunch. It was about a 45 minute drive so we talked about the trip and tried to search the radio for new music that has come out since we had left. We got there and enjoyed our wonderful food and then walked around some of the shops. From here we drove up to a beach where we could see the honu, which are Hawaiian green sea turtles! There weren’t any on the beach but we could see them poke there heads out of the water. After this we went to a grocery store to get some water and I also picked up some snacks for the next stretch of sea. Then we got back in the car to go to a different beach where we could spend sometime in the water. We went to pipeline but we weren’t aloud to swim so we ended up going back to the turtle beach because we would be able to go in the water there, we just had to watch out for the turtles! I was standing in the water next to this couple and then this lady tells us to watch out because a turtle was coming up right behind us! It was literally a couple feet away from me so I scooted back and just watched it. I never thought I would be that close to a sea turtle in Hawaii! We hung out in the water some more and laid out on the beach and it was nice and hot with no rain. Once we left the beach we went to the dole pineapple factory and got some amazing pineapple soft serve. Then we headed back to the ship so that Megan could give her mom and aunt a tour of our home.

Once we were back on the ship I said goodbye and thanked them for showing me around Hawaii and letting me feel like a part of the family. I went back to my room and got changed and headed off the ship by myself to explore Honolulu. I didn’t want to go to far since I had to be back on the ship in a few hours so I just found a shopping center and walked around all the stores while enjoying the ability to use my cell phone again. I got back on the ship a little early because I knew there would be a massive line around on ship time and wrote some postcards. At nine when everyone was suppose to be on the ship Megan and I went up to the seventh deck to see if there was a long line and there was a mob of people around the gangway pushing and yelling, it was crazy. Most of them were drunk which wasn’t helping the situation. I think they were finally told that they wouldn’t get dock time so that they would calm down before someone got hurt. The next day we got a letter from the dean voicing his disappointment in what happened, but I’m not sure if anyone got punish or not.

After Hawaii:

I have now been at sea for five days since we left Hawaii and I still have five more to go. It feels like it’s been weeks already! We had the ambassador’s ball on the 25^th which was really nice because we had a five course dinner with assigned seating and everything. There was also a dance and a lot of other events, but I had a ton of homework so I went back to my room and worked on that after dinner. Today was the last day of classes and I turned in four different papers so I am feeling relieved but finals are still to come in the next few days. I have two tests that matter and a final paper to write and all of this will be done by the time we arrive in Costa Rica! After Costa Rica we have four days at sea and then we will pull into Miami on May 9^th!!!! The first day at sea we will have meetings about reflection and reentry, the second day we will pass through the Panama Canal, and the last two days will be for packing which should be very interesting. I hope I can fit everything back into my suitcases… We will also have convocation on the last day at sea. So that’s all that’s going on for now and I should have one more post before I’m back in the US!

Japan

2008-04-18T19:44:00.000-07:00

Day 1: A day full on lines and trains/subways…

I got up and went to breakfast and then at 8am they called everyone up to the faculty lounge for the temperature screening that was required before getting off the ship. I was expecting to get stuck in a long line, but the way the measure our temperature was to just have us walk in front of a video camera so I was in and out in less than a minute including the time I waited in line. After this I thought well maybe it really won’t take that long to get off the ship, and this of course was wrong. The rest would be done off the ship so we had to wait to be called by our ID number. Originally just Megan and I were going to travel alone but Andi and Amy’s plans fell through so they ended up coming with us. I had packed everything the night before so I just sat in my room and waited until they finally called my number just after 11. So I got off the ship went and picked up my passport and waited in line to meet with immigration and customs. The line only took about 20 minutes and then I met with immigration where I had my fingerprints and picture taken and then went to customs where they asked me some questions and then let me go. Megan and I were ready to go but Andi’s number was in the last group called so we didn’t end up getting out of there until 1pm.
Just when we thought the waiting was over we went up to get tickets for the portliner which took us to the station where we would validate our rail pass and there was a long line to get those tickets. So we waited another twenty minutes and hopped on the portliner for two stops and ended up getting there the same time as people who walked got there. We wandered around the station trying to find where to validate our rail passes and then we saw another huge line of SASers and knew we where in the right spot. This line took closer to an hour but we got our actual rail pass which was really cool! So we ended up reserving seats on the 3:25 train and at that point they only had smoking seats left but we took them anyway because it was better than waiting an hour for the next train. Finally we got on the subway to the Shin-Kobe station where the bullet train left from and got to the track with about ten minutes to spare.
The train finally pulled up and we were so excited to get on. We found our seats and it was no joke about being a smoking car, it was like being in a car with someone smoking and all the windows are up and this was continuous for the whole three hour plus ride. Megan escaped to another car but I just stayed and slept for most of the way and listened to my ipod. I was awake for about the last 45 minutes before Tokyo and then we were finally there…well almost. Once we got to the Tokyo station we had to take another JR (Japan Rail) line to where Disneyland/our hotel was. Luckily Megan looked up the name of the line ahead of time so we followed the path to where this line was suppose to be and it seemed like a mile walk through this train station! Luckily they had those moving pathways that sped up the process. We eventually got to the right line but didn’t know which subway to get on so we tried to ask some Japanese people and they were really helpful! There were like four guys helping us and they pulled out schedules and the one we needed to get on was actually on the other side of the track so we had to go back up the stairs and down the other side and it was already there so we quickly said thank you and ran up and down the stairs and got on just in time.
There was standing room only so we hung on to the little bars and paid close attention to the signs and announcements so we didn’t miss the stop. The ride only took about 15 minutes and when we got off and walked up the stairs we were literally right at Disneyland. The area we were in was a little bit like downtown Disney. From here we got on the Disney Resort Monorail that took us right to our hotel. We went to check in and because there was four of us instead of two they upgraded us to a room with four beds for $60 more which I think was a pretty good deal. We headed up to the room and two of the beds were queens and the other two were twins. I got a queen bed and I laid down for a second and it was so comfortable! We were all hungry and the restaurants in the Sheraton where all super expensive so we decided to head back to the downtown Disney area because we saw a burger place there on the way in the looked pretty good. The place was called Becker’s Burgers, I’m nit sure if it’s from the US but the food was really good and I think we paid about $7 for a burger fries and a drink which seemed pretty good to me after everyone obsessed over how expensive Japan was going to be. We went back to the hotel and we saw a business center with computers and we just stopped in to see how much it was and it ended up being free! So I spent a couple hours there when I probably should have been sleeping, but I applied for community college and got accepted all in this time which was awesome! I have to take a class this summer when I get home to make up for the credits I am missing by being here on SAS. I think I finally went up to the room to go to bed around 12:30.

Day 2: Disneyland!!!

I woke up at seven and got ready because we planned to head to the park by eight. I was ready pretty early so I went back down to the computers and used the internet until everyone else was ready to go. Megan checked us out of the hotel and then we went over and checked in our luggage for the day so we wouldn’t have to lug it around Disneyland. We got back on the monorail and got to the entrance at about 8:15 and the park opened at 8:30. There were huge lines when we got there and I think we actually got into the park around 8:45 or 9. The first place we ran to was Space Mountain. We grabbed fast pass tickets for later and then got in line which surprisingly only took 15 minutes. It was very similar to the one in California as far as where you get on the ride but the inside seemed a lot different. There was no music and the stars and everything didn’t look as cool, so I think California definitely has them beat on this ride. It was still really cool though! Our fast passes were already going to be good in like thirty minutes so we walked over to the other side of the park and got fastpasses for thunder mountain and then came back to ride Space Mountain again. Once we were done on Space Mountain we still had a while before our Thunder Mountain tickets were good so we got in line for Pirates of the Caribbean. This had a little bit of a longer wait, but it wasn’t too bad. We got inside and they had the Blue Bayou restaurant just like California and the ride was very similar too. They even put Johnny Dep in three places just like back home.
After Pirates we were ready for some food because the only breakfast we had were the little boxes of cereal we smuggled off the ship. We found this hot dog place with a foot long hot dog fries and a drink for about $8, which I don’t even think you can get in the US for that cheap. Next we got on Thunder Mountain, which I think might not be opened back home anymore because someone died on it or something, but it is such a fun ride! Then we went and got fast passes for Splash Mountain which weren’t going to be good until 4 so we had some time to kill. Without fast passes most of the lines were 2 hours long so we tried to find some that weren’t that bad. We made our way to toon town and rode the roller coaster there which only lasts for about 45 seconds but it was still fun. Then we went on Star Tours which didn’t have any wait and it was really funny because it was exactly the same as California’s but it was all in Japanese, except for when they said light speed! We took a break and got some green tea soft serve ice cream which was really good and then sat down to watch the 25th anniversary parade which was really cool. Once the parade was over we still had a little time until we could get on Splash Mountain so we tried to find this fresh fruit place that was on the map and it took a while but we finally found it and I got some really good pineapple and a banana.
After this we headed to Splash Mountain which I think was actually better than the one in California. The logs were a lot nicer and you sat two people side my side. All the songs were in Japanese which was kind of funny. Once we got off we were ready to head back because we wanted to make sure we got to the train in time. We went back to the hotel and got our stuff and used the internet for another 15 minutes. We got back to the monorail and when we were about to get on Megan realized she didn’t have her Rail Pass so she went back to see if it was in the room but they weren’t able to find it. Luckily we allowed plenty of time to make it to the train so we still had a chance to go back to Becker’s Burgers for dinner. I wanted to go to this huge Disney Store they had and get a Tokyo Disneyland T-shirt and some postcards but we didn’t have time for this so we hurried to the subway that took us to the Tokyo Station. Megan was able to just buy a ticket back to Kobe and we all reserved seats thankfully in the non-smoking car this time. We got to the track about 15 minutes early which was a relief because this was the last train of the night. I thought I would be able to sleep all the way back but I couldn’t so I just listened to my Ipod most of the way. We eventually made it to the Shin-Kobe station and then we thought it would be cheaper to just take a cab to the dock instead of paying for the two different subways for 4 people, but I think it only ended up being a dollar cheaper. I was happy to be back on the ship again and just showered and went to bed.

Day 3: Hiroshima

Megan, Amy, Andi and I met for breakfast at 7:30 and then headed back to the train station to go to Hiroshima. This train ride was only about an hour so we sat in the unreserved car and we all got seats but had to split up. Once we to the Hiroshima station we found a map of the city and figured we would walk to the different places we wanted to go to. It took us about 20 minutes to figure out how to get to the other side of the station, but eventually we were on our way. The sign said it was a ten minute walk to the Hiroshima castle which is where we went first, but it definitely took us a lot longer. As we were walking up to the castle we came across this big Kendo tournament, at least I think that’s what it was called because the back of someone’s jacket said it. It was kids of all different ages fighting with sticks and they had full metal face masks on and all types of padding and they would yell as they were fighting which was a little scary. There were boys and girls and some of them were really young. We watched this for a while and then walked up to see the castle, which was really beautiful. We didn’t end up going inside of it though because you had to pay.
Once we left the castle we wanted to make our way to Hiroshima Peace Memorial park and hopefully find some food along the way. On our way there we passed this recreational sports building and saw some kids playing water polo which was really exciting for Megan because she plays for CLU and really misses it. Then we saw a bunch of people lined up and realizes they were waiting to meet a band because there were posters of them all over and I think they had a concert there later that day. They looked like a Japanese version of the Backstreet Boys. We found another map that showed us where we needed to go and we also saw that there was a shopping center near by so we went there first to try and find some good sushi for lunch. We looked around and couldn’t find anywhere so we just ended up eating in the basement level of this mall which was the only cheap food we could find. So I got some chicken and rice and green tea ice cream. They did have sushi down there but they didn’t speak English so it was hard to figure out what you were getting.
We left the mall and the first place we walked up to was the A-Bomb Dome. We stayed there for a while and then walked across the river to the Peace Memorial Park. Here we saw the Children’s Peace Monument which we watched a documentary about in global studies. The statue is of a girl with her arms stretched out and a paper crane above her. She was a victim of radiation poisoning from the bomb and she believed that if she folded 1000 paper cranes she would be cured, but she died after making over 900. Around the monument there were glass cases full of paper cranes made by children, there were thousands of them. A lot of them were put together to spell out things like Peace and Love. After this we saw the peace flame and the peace bell. We continued down the walkway to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum where we spent about an hour or two walking through. The museum was very powerful and I think it’s something everyone should see. It was very sad, but it somehow didn’t hit me as hard as the museum in Vietnam. I’m hoping to also make it to Pearl Harbor while I am in Hawaii.
After we left the museum we found a trolley that would take us back to Hiroshima station and it was only $1.50. I’m still glad we walked on the way there though because it let us see a lot more of the city. There was a train that was going to leave in 15 minutes but we decided to take a later one so that we could shop a little and try to find post cards because we saw a shop when we were there earlier in the day. I got my postcards and then got a bite to eat from McDonalds because we weren’t going to make it back to the ship before the dining hall closed. We took the trains and subways back and I relaxed and watched some TV before going to bed.

Day 4: Kyoto

It was our last day in Japan and Andi Amy and I wanted to get the most out of our rail pass as possible so we decided to go to Kyoto which is a more traditional city in Japan. The train ride was only a half hour a way so we didn’t head out until about 9. Amy’s roommate had already been there and told us we should go to Philosophers street because it was really pretty and lined with cherry blossom trees and there were Geishas walking around and a lot of cute little restaurants. Once we got there we found a map and Philosopher’s Street looked pretty far away so we tried to find the bus that would take us there and we thought we were walking in the right direction but we got about 10 minutes away and realized we should turn around and actually ask the information desk. Right before we did this we saw a car accident, nothing big just someone getting rear ended at a red light. So we walked back and found a guy that spoke English and he told us what bus we needed to take and we could get a bus pass for $5 that we could use as much as we want for the whole day. The bus didn’t go to Philosopher Street but it went to a temple that looked pretty close on the map so we thought we would check that out first and then walk to the street.
We bought our ticket and got on this bus which they packed full of people and luckily I was able to just face the window and stare out otherwise I was going to get really claustrophobic. We could barely understand what they were saying at each station but we thought we got off at the right one after about 20 minutes. Either way I was just happy to get off of there. After staring at our map for five minutes we figured out the way to the temple and started walking. We walked for about 20 minutes and then we saw the big orange gateway to the temple which was right next to a 7-11 which seemed funny to me. Before we went in there were some vendors lined up along the street and we spent almost all of our cash buying t-shirts and other stuff because it was a lot cheaper than any of the other stores we had seen. Then we walked inside and checked out the different part of the temple. I didn’t have much background on it because we just picked it off a map so I’m not sure what type of temple it was. There were these little water fountains with a dragon statue in the middle and the people would walk up and use these wooden things to scoop out the water and they would sip it like they were going to drink the water but then they spit it back out. People would also buy these papers and write something on them and then tie them onto these wood tree branches that it looked like they had cut off of some tree and with all the papers that were tied on looked almost like pink leafs. To go further into the temple you had to pay money and we really didn’t have any left so we started walking to where we thought Philosopher’s Street was and hoped the restaurants would take credit card.
Amy had set the map down when we were buying stuff and forgot to pick it up so we really didn’t have any idea where we were. We walked for about 20 minutes and tried to ask some people where it was but we just couldn’t find it. One lady was telling us to get on another bus and go to a temple and then walk from there but we were tired and just decided to take the bus back to the station because we were right by a bus station. There was a McDonald’s right by where we got dropped off the first time so we went back there to eat because we thought they would take credit card, but they didn’t. Luckily I had enough money in coins to get a meal. So we ate and got back on the bus to Kyoto station and just missed the train so we had to wait another hour. We got back to the ship a little after 4 and I just stayed on because I was out of money. Apparently there was a long line at on-ship time and a lot of people ended up getting dock time. They later made an announcement that we had to leave four students in Japan, but they were ok and I didn’t get any more details than that. I just hope they are able to make up all their class work from the seven days of class they will be missing if they meet the ship in Hawaii.

After Japan:

We have been back at sea for about 5 days now and there’s not too much going on. We did pass the International Date Line and had two April 15ths which was pretty cool, so now I am behind California time instead of ahead which makes me feel a little closer to home. Last night we had the Students of Service Auction which was pretty exciting. Someone paid $1000 to raise the US flag when we pull into Miami and other things like the captains hat and blowing the horn in Miami also went for over $500. I’m not sure how much money we ended up raising, but it was definitely a lot. We don’t have class today which is nice and in four more days we will be in Hawaii! It’s going to be weird to be in the US and use dollars and my cell phone and have everyone speak English…I’m really excited! Plus I’ve never been to Hawaii before. I wish we had more time there. Anyway I think that’s all the updates I have for now…

China!!

2008-04-10T04:58:00.000-07:00

Day 1:
I got up extra early, around 6, to be sure that I had everything packed. I showered and headed to breakfast around 7 and then went back to my room to grab my stuff and head to the Union by 7:30. When I got there they gave me a name tag to wear, a blue semester at sea bag to give to a student, and an arrival and departure card that we had to fill out to enter China. We headed to the buses around 8:15 and we walked through the mall and down to the street and I was really sad that I had to leave Hong Kong already because it was such a cool city. There were 60 of us spilt into two buses and I got on bus 1. I think the ride to the airport was about 30 or 45 minutes. When we got there we lined up in alphabetical order and went to the counter to pick up our tickets. From I went through security and made my way to the terminal that our flight was leaving from. We had some time so I wanted to try and find the Starbucks in the airport. First I walked over to the terminal that we were leaving from to be sure that I knew where it was and then as I was trying to find the Starbucks I ran into Megan and found out she was on my same flight even though she had booked her trip independently. She knew where the Starbucks was so we left our heavy backpacks with some people staying at the terminal and made the long walk to Starbucks. We got our drinks and made our way back a few minutes before the flight was boarding. I boarded and stayed awake until they served lunch which was rice and chicken and then slept until we landed, the total flight time was about 3 hours. Once we got off the flight we had to wait a really long time to go through immigration. I finally got through and got another stamp in my passport which is always exciting! I’m really disappointed we didn’t get one in South Africa, but the pages are still filling up pretty quickly.
Once we were through I found an ATM and took out some cash and then we waited for everyone else to get through customs and then we got on a bus to the hotel. Our tour guide’s name was Jeff and he was from the University of International Business and Economics that was hosting our visit. We had about a 30 minute ride to our hotel and it was right across the street from the University. We got our rooms and I roomed with a girl named Anna from Texas. They gave us an updated itinerary and a book about Beijing and then we brought our stuff up to our room. We were originally suppose to meet with the students later that night, but they took this part out because it was actually a holiday so they weren’t able to meet. After we put the stuff in the room we met back down in the lobby to get a tour of the UIBE campus. We walked across the street and Holly another person from the school pointed out the dorm that I posted a picture of earlier and explained that it was the biggest in China with over 10,000 students. We walked further and saw the food they were selling that I also posted a picture of and then Jeff told us we could walk around for 20 minutes and then meet back at the lobby so that we could go to dinner. So we really didn’t get to see too much of the campus, but we tried to make the best of it. Anna and I walked over to the dorm to try and find the bookstore so we could get t-shirts or something because someone told us it was in the dorm but we didn’t end up finding it. When we walked up was saw the KFC delivery guy delivering to the dorm! There was a grocery store in the bottom floor of the dorm but no bookstore. By this time we had to hurry to get back in time for dinner.
We all met in the lobby and we walked to the restaurant which was right down the street. The set up was just like the Chinese restaurants I ate at in Malaysia where they sit 9 people at the table and they bring out several dishes for the table to share. This restaurant specialized in Peking duck which I actually really liked! I heard a lot of people say the food in China was a lot different then Chinese food in the US, but I actually found it quite similar. We even got some really good sweet and sour pork! For dessert they brought out these donut like things that you dip in sugar which were also really good. After dinner instead of going to meet the students we went on a bus tour of the city. We drove past a lot of the big buildings and then Tiananmen Square which I was surprised was right on the main street. We also drove by the water cube and bird’s nest Olympic Venues, which was really cool! The water cube was lit up and changing colors, but the bird’s nest was not lit up. After this we went back to the hotel and I just went to bed because I was exhausted!

Day 2:
I got up and went to breakfast at 8. They didn’t have any cereal or anything like that which was disappointing but they did have rice and noodles which seemed kind of strange. They also had dim sum and there was one with sweet beans inside which I really liked. After this I headed to the lobby where we were meeting at 8:30 to leave for the Great Wall! We got on the bus and had about a two hour drive to the wall. I slept most of the way, but for the part that I was awake I saw some really funny road signs that I wish I got pictures of. They said things like don’t drink and drive or don’t use your cell phone, but the funny part was they had illustrations next to them that were really funny. As we got closer to the wall I kept looking at the mountains to try and see the great wall and I finally saw it! We parked the bus and Jeff told us we would have to walk up the mountain for about 20 minutes to get to the top or there was a cable car for anyone that didn’t think they could make the walk. We would meet back at the bus in two hours so this only gave us about an hour on the wall. There were vendors lined up all long the street selling great wall souvenirs. My friend Kate and I both wanted to do some shopping when we got back down so we stayed together. To get to the wall we had to climb what seemed to be a million stairs. I regretted not actually climbing Tabletop Mountain so this time I decided I would definitely climb up to the Great Wall. It was really hard and we took a couple breaks, but we finally made it up there and it was the greatest feeling ever. The part of the wall we were at is called Mutianyu and we saw a sign that sent former President Clinton visited this part of the wall on June 28, 1998 and said “The Great Wall here is very beautiful, very grand, more beautiful and grander than I imagined” and I definitely agree!
Once we were at the top we walked up the wall to where the cable car was and decided to take it down. There was also a toboggan car that you could take down that everyone really loved so I kind of wished we did that. The cable car was still really cool though, definitely better then climbing down all those stairs again. Once we got down we bought some I climbed the Great Wall shirts and other stuff and made it back to the bus just in time. Unfortunately not everyone else made it back on time so we had to sit there for 45 minutes and this resulted in us losing our lunch reservation. Our tour guides decided to take us to a place called Big Pizza because they thought we would miss the food from back home. The place could fit up to 80 people so eventually all 60 of us got in as other people left. It was a big buffet with pizza and other stuff like popcorn chicken, French fries, chicken wings, a salad bar and all kinds of stuff. They also had unlimited soda and beer and frozen yogurt! It wasn’t the best food but it tasted good because we were all so hungry.
After lunch the bus took us to Silk Street Market to do some shopping. This place was six stories and then it also had two basement levels. The vendors would start out at a ridiculously high price and then you would bargain way down from like 1000 yuan to 100. I didn’t buy too much because I was too tired to bargain and the people were so pushy. At one point I literally had two women grabbing onto me trying to get me to buy something. They gave us a really long time here so I just left early and went to a Starbucks that I saw across the street. After this we headed back to the hotel to rest for a little bit before we had to meet again for dinner. This time we had dinner in the hotel, but it was very similar to the dinner we had the night before. After dinner we had a party with the Chinese students. They rented out a bar for us down the street so we walked there and paid 20 Yuan to get unlimited drinks. I was kind of disappointed with this because we walked in and the music was so loud you could barely hear anything. I ended up talking to a couple of students for a while. One girl told me a lot of the girls reminded her of Paris Hilton and sometimes she thinks all girls in the US are like that and go out to bars every night. I tried to tell her that wasn’t true. She said she never went out to places like this and she really liked to read. I felt kind of bad for her and some of the other students because I could tell they felt out of place. There were some though that got up on the dance floor and danced with the rest of the SASers.
After a while the loud music was too much so Kate and I decided to leave and walk to an internet café that our guide showed us that was right next to the hotel. It was only 3 yuan for an hour which is less than 50 cents. This place was huge and most of the people in there were playing games. One bad thing about the place was that people were able to smoke inside. So we enjoyed the internet for an hour and I tried to figure out how to register for summer school at the community college, but that didn’t go so well so hopefully I can take care of it in Japan. When we were done I went back to my room and went to sleep.

Day 3:
I woke up and went to breakfast again and 8 and met in the lobby at 8:30. Out first stop was Tiananmen Square. We walked around for a while taking pictures and this is also were they had a big countdown to the Olympics so I got a picture of that. From here we continued to the Forbidden City which was a huge complex that we had almost 2 hours to walk around. We got these little headset things to where that knew where we were and told us about the different parts. One of the things I really didn’t like about this trip was that Jeff wasn’t really a tour guide, he was just someone that worked at UIBE, so he didn’t really tell us anything about what we were seeing. I got to the end of the city a little early so I just waited for the rest of the group. From here we were going to lunch at the Temple of Heaven and then we were going to actually see the Temple of Heaven. We got to there and had to take these little cars to the restaurant because it was a pretty far walk and our driver had this Chinese techno music on so we had him turn it up on the drive and it was a lot of fun. We got there and it was the same style that we had at dinner the previous two nights. When we were done eating we took the little car back to the entrance of the temple complex and walked through the different parts which took about an hour and a half.
Once we left here we headed to the Chinese acrobatic show, which besides the Great Wall was my favorite part of the trip. Avi is the guy who is making the voyage video for semester at Sea and he was on out trip and videotaped the whole thing, so I’m hoping a good portion of it will make it on the voyage dvd. I got a couple video clips so I can show everyone when I get back. After the show a lot of people left to go back to the markets but I just went back to the hotel on the bus and relaxed until we were leaving for dinner at another local restaurant. There ended up only being about 25 of the 60 that went to dinner, which was kind of nice. The food was basically the same as it had been but we got to choose the plates they brought out for the table which was good. After dinner I went back to the internet café for a while and then bought a calling card from this corner store that someone at dinner had used already and it was only about five US dollars for 110 minutes. So I went back to the hotel and talked to my Dad which was really cool and then went to bed.

Day 4:
I woke up at 8 again for breakfast, but we weren’t checking out of the hotel until 9:30 so I used the extra time to call more people which was so nice! I packed all my stuff after this and went down to the lobby to check out and then we got back on the bus. The first place we went was the Summer Palace. We walked to one end and then took a bus back to the entrance to leave. There were a lot of really pretty building and they were all right on the lake which was really nice. When we left here it was time for lunch and this was not like any of the other meals we had. It was a really fancy buffet in a hotel that was like 5 different rooms of food. They had all the Chinese food and then things like sushi and all different desserts and drinks and all kinds of ice cream…it was really cool. The guy next to me actually ate a chicken food and a duck head. I stayed away from that sort of thing. After we ate we went by the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube to take pictures. We couldn’t get that close because they were still being constructed, but it was still really cool. We also saw the apartments that the athletes would be staying in.
Our next stop was the Lama Temple. This was a Buddhist temple and when we walked in there were people that would light three incense and bow three times in front of the different buildings and then through the incense into a fire pit. The sign said “Paying homage to Buddha three incenses”. We weren’t aloud to take pictures inside any of the building but they all had large statues inside. The largest one was about three or four stories tall and there was a sign out front that said that the Guinness Book of Records certifies that the statue of Maitreya in the Lama temple in Beijing was carved out of a single white sandalwood tree 26 meters high. Once we were done here we headed back to the airport for our flight to Shanghai. Once we got there we learned first that we would all have to check our bags if they were over 5 Kg and mine was like 8. Then they couldn’t check it yet because they didn’t know what gate we were at and then they said out flight was delayed because of fog and the ship might not even be in Shanghai when we got there. They told us we had 30 minutes if we wanted to leave our stuff and go grab food so I found a KFC and got some popcorn chicken. Then as we were sitting there we noticed all these people we taking pictures of some guy and it was a Chinese celebrity! Holly told us that he was in a TV series and he played a police officer. We went over to take pictures even though we didn’t know who he was it just seemed like a really cool idea and then he asked us where we were form and were we were going and he happened to be on our same flight. We asked if we could take a picture with him and he said yes, but I didn’t get one. I still thought it was really cool though!! Made me feel a little better after finding out we might be sleeping in an airport.
I went back to where our stuff was and now they said the flight isn’t delayed anymore and we could all check our bags now. Nearly everyone checked something and then we went to our terminal which had switched and as soon as we got there it switched again to the terminal right next to us and then all the way back to the original one which was pretty far away. We finally got there when it was supposed to be boarding but the plane wasn’t even there yet. As I was sitting waiting Megan came over because her plane was leaving from a terminal right next to ours. She told me about her trip and she actually got to sleep on the great wall because she planned it all independently and I was pretty jealous, but I was still happy with my trip. We finally boarded about 30 minutes late and our plane was huge! I think there were about 8 seats in each row, but I guess some people actually flew back on a double-decker plane! I thought I would sleep the whole way home but I couldn’t sleep. The flight was only about 2 hours which wasn’t bad. Once we landed in Shanghai our luggage was already coming out on the carousel and I found mine pretty quickly and everyone else got theirs without a problem. Once we all had our bags we hurried to find the trip leader meeting us at the airport and power walked/ran all the way to our bus because there were a ton of trips getting back that night and that meant we would all have to stand in line outside the ship and wait for everyone’s things to be searched by two people.
The running paid off because I got the third seat in the bus. We drove to the ship with no idea how far away it was because the last time we saw the ship we were in Hong Kong, not Shanghai. The city looked pretty cool from what I could see at night and it only ended up being a 30 minute drive. At one point the second bus from our trip tried to pass us but we told our bus driver not to let that happen! The trip leader told us we may have to sit in the bus for a while when we got there because the ship might not be cleared yet because it got in so late. We got there and she told us to wait but we just sort of got off anyways and they let us on the ship and I got through security in about 5 minutes and I have never been so happy to be back on the ship. It’s weird how it really feels like home now. I went back to my room and unpacked and went back to look at the line to get back on the ship and there had to have been 300-400 people out there, it was insane!! I should have taken a picture because it went all along the ship and then curved back around. I also found out the ship had only gotten to port around 6-7pm so some people that got back early on independent trips had to wait a couple hours for the ship to arrive. After this I went to bed and it felt so good to have my bed back!

Day 5:
I got up to go to breakfast with Megan at 8. We weren’t sure what we wanted to do, but Megan wanted to go shopping to find pearls because she didn’t get any in Beijing so we went tot the hospitality desk to ask were to go and she wrote down the name of some market for us. We went back to our rooms and got ready and then went out to find a cab to take us to the market. It was really cold and rainy, but it was a nice change from the heat and humidity of the previous ports. We got to the market which was actually pretty cool and after walking around for a few minutes we found a really cool pearl shop and Megan got a bunch of necklaces and earrings. We didn’t have anything else we really wanted to shop for so we looked at the map and we saw there was a Hyatt with an 88th floor observation deck and that sounded cool so we found a cab driver to take us there. He didn’t know exactly where it was so he dropped us off and we had to ask a few people which building it was. We eventually made it there and this is when we saw the McDonalds delivery guy! It seemed kind of funny that he was delivering to such an expensive hotel. Once we got in there we found out it cost about $10 US to go up and we thought that was too much just to go up and look around so instead we went to the lobby of the Hyatt to see if there were any restaurants up there to eat at.
We ended up going to an Italian restaurant on the 56th floor called Cucina…I think. It was pretty expensive, but we had a great view of the city and the pearl tower, I think it’s called. They had this deal where you could get a three course meal so we got that and got dumplings, a pasta dish and two scoops of ice cream. Everyone else that was up there were businessmen in suits so we felt kind of out of place but I liked it. Most of them were American or British with one Chinese guy at the table. When we got our bill we spent almost more on drinks than on food because we didn’t realize it was nearly $10 for the water and $6 for a soda, but I didn’t let it bother me because when would I ever be eating on the 56th floor of the Hyatt in Shanghai again? Well I guess you never know… After this we tried to see if there was internet available at the hotel but it was really expensive so we went back to the ship and asked the hospitality desk if there was an internet café around. There was but it was all the way over where we had just been and we were so exhausted we decided not to go and just use the ship internet to book our hotel in Japan.
After doing some research on the Tokyo Disneyland we found out that if there are too many people in the park they can stop selling tickets, but if you stay at a Disney sponsored hotel you were guaranteed tickets. So we decided to be safe and stay at a Disney hotel even though they were pretty expensive and we decided at the Sheraton Tokyo Grande Bay Hotel! It looks really nice so I’m pretty excited. After this I stayed on the ship for the rest of the day and tried to catch up on sleep because I had a sore throat and thought I might be getting sick or it was just from all the pollution.

After China:

So the day after China they posted Global Studies grades and I got a 96%! We also found out before we can get off the ship in Japan tomorrow we will have to get our temperatures taken, our fingerprints taken, a picture taken, and have a face to face meeting with immigration. They think we will be getting off the ship around 1pm which is really disappointing because tomorrow is when we are taking the train to Tokyo and staying at the Sheraton and I want to have time to enjoy my nice hotel room! The train ride is about 3 hours, the only thing I am worried about is finding the station, but with most of the ship using the rail pass I don’t think it will be too much of a problem. We have our logistical preport meeting in about 20 minutes so I hoping that will give us some more information. Once we leave Japan we will be passing over the International Date Line which means we will have April 15th twice, and yes we have classes on both April 15ths. We will have a total of 8 days at sea to Hawaii, where we will only have a day, and then a stretch of 10 days to Costa Rica. I am so exhausted form traveling so much that I think I’ll actually enjoying having time at sea to relax and catch up on sleep and homework. Anyway I think that’s all that is going on for now. I will actually be able to use my cell phone in Hawaii so if you want to call me I will be there on April 22.

China pictures

2008-04-08T01:58:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures from my time in China, I will hopefully have my blog up in the next day or two.

The University of International Business and Economics (They hosted my Beijing trip)

The largest dorm in China, housing 10,000 students.

The food they were serving on campus

McDonalds and KFC deliver in China! Surprisingly I have seen a lot more KFCs than McDonalds in all the countries we have been too. There are also a ton of Pizza huts.

The Great Wall of China

The Temple of Heaven

Here are the bird's nest and water cube Olympic venues, this was as close as we could get and the fog/smog didn't allow for the best picture.

This was at the Chinese acrobatic show.

Countdown to the Olympics!

I'm on the Great Wall of China!!

I'm in Beijing!!!

2008-04-05T07:22:00.000-07:00

So I decided not to bring my lap top on trip because I was afraid something would happen to it, but we we found an internet cafe right next to the hotel for less than 50 cents an hour! I don't want to write my full blog right now but just wanted to let everyone know I made it and it's amazing. I climbed the Great Wall which was not easy but it felt awesome when I got to the top. I'll post more when I get back to the ship :)

Hong Kong

2008-04-03T09:41:00.000-07:00

I only had this one day in Hong Kong because I’m leaving for Beijing in the morning, so I wanted write about it now and do another post for the rest of China. I got up at 7 for breakfast because that was about the time we were supposed to be pulling in. It was really foggy out but we were still able to see all the sky scrapers as we pulled it which was really cool. We got to dock in an awesome spot with a great view of the city. The cost of a hotel in the same area would be about $300-$400 a night. After breakfast I went up and posted my Vietnam blog and to my surprise blogger was actually a free site and that’s why I was able to post all those pictures, so hopefully it stays that way! Then we had the diplomatic briefing at about 9 and I just watched it from my room. I got all my stuff ready to go out with Megan and Shane, but the ship wasn’t cleared until about 11. Megan and Shane wanted to do some electronic shopping and Megan’s roommate Lauren did too so we tried to find this electronic market first. We walked off the ship and we exited right into a mall and the first thing we saw was a California Pizza Kitchen! We had to take a subway to get to the electronic place so first we found an ATM and then we used our map to find the closest subway station. We got our tickets and got on and got off at the third stop. Once we got out we made our way up to the street and tried to find our way to this place by asking different people and a police officer was actually the final one to point us in the right direction. I’m not sure if we ever ended up in the exact place everyone wanted to go to, but we found a couple electronics stores to look in. Things weren’t as cheap as expected so we decided it was time to get lunch and we saw a sign for a place called Portland Café that looked pretty good and it said they had English menus. We turned down the street and it also happened to have a street market type of thing on it so we decided we would look after we ate. We ended up getting two orders of chicken and mushroom spring rolls to share with everyone and then I ordered the beef with rice noodles and both things were so so so good! I’ve also gotten a lot better at using chopsticks hehe.
We finished eating and went out to the market and they had a bunch of seven and true religion jeans so Megan and I had to buy a pair because they were really cheap and we also got some I love Hong Kong t-shirts. After this Shane really wanted to go to the space museum, so we got back on the subway back towards the ship where the museum was. We knew we were in the right area but it took us a little bit to find it and while we were looking for it these students came up to us and showed us their school id’s and said they were working on a project and wanted to take a picture with us. We took the picture and after realized we should have gotten them to take one with our camera, but it was too late so we had someone else point us toward the museum. We got there right as a sky show was starting so we bought tickets and hurried in. It was pitch black because the show was about to start so we a guy lead us with a flashlight to our seats. We had to put headphones on to hear it in English because it was actually done in Cantonese. The show we watched was all about black holes which was pretty cool. I think my favorite part was when they showed the different constellations and it was just like looking up at the night sky. When the show was over we bought tickets to go see the space science part of the museum and walked around there for about 45 minutes. When we were done there Megan and I wanted to find post cards and stamps so we went to the Sheraton because we thought they might have them there and it turned out we were right! They also had a sky view bar on the 18th floor that went and checked out real quick which was really cool. We had wanted to also take a ferry to go see the worlds largest Buddha, but it was getting too late at this point so we slowly made our way back to the ship to put our stuff away and then go to dinner at California Pizza Kitchen!
So we got to the ship around 6 and dropped stuff off and headed to dinner around 6:15. We ordered some spinach and artichoke dip to start and then I got the White pizza and they were both really good, and for the first time I can remember they actually had free refills! We wanted to go to the light show at 8 but we still had some time to kill so we had seen some massage chairs in the mall and went to go try them out and I got a frappaccino from Starbucks for dessert. I’m hoping to eat some more authentic food on my Beijing Trip, but it’s just nice to have something to remind you of home when you are so far away. We left to go to see the light show and had a little trouble getting there and walked up just as it was starting. All the buildings are synced up with lights that go with this music that plays and it was really cool. It only lasted a little over 10 minutes, but I’m really glad we got to see it. We weren’t quite ready to go back to the ship because it was our only night in Hong Kong! So we looked up where the night market was and took the subway there. It wasn’t as good as the first market we went to, but I still found some cool stuff. After walking the whole market we made our way back to the ship and got here around 10:30. I went and picked up my passport for my trip tomorrow and now I am typing this blog and its midnight and I still have to pack and hopefully go up and post this. I’m pretty tired so I hope I didn’t forget anything… My trip leaves at 8 and I can’t wait!!

Vietnam

2008-04-02T17:07:00.000-07:00

Day 1:

One other thing I forgot to mention when I was talking about the first day in my previous blog was that a lot of parents are here on the parent trip. After the diplomatic briefing they made an announcement that all the parents were in the 6^th deck dining hall waiting to be picked up, so Megan and I went up there because we were super jealous of the kids who got to see their parents! It made us pretty sad so we didn’t stay too long. So after I posted my blog I got some lunch and headed to my FDP “Conditions for Business in Vietnam”. I was pretty disappointed that I had to stay on the ship while everyone else got off to explore Vietnam, but it wasn’t too bad because it only ended up lasting two hours instead of the four. It was basically a talk led by Sesto Vecchi who is an attorney in Vietnam. He first gave us some background on himself. He first came to Vietnam in 1965 with the US Navy and after he served in the Navy he came back and opened a law office. He worked there from 1966-1975 when the office closed and then came back to reopen it in 1989 and has been in Vietnam ever since. From here he just talked about business in Vietnam and their economy. One fact that I found very interesting is that 80% of the population is 40 years or younger. This is a result of the four million that were killed in the Vietnam War, or the American War as it is referred to here in Vietnam. At both the diplomatic briefing and Mr. Vecchi’s speech we were told that the Vietnamese do not think much about this war today as we do in the US and a big part of this is because most of the population is too young to remember it. In a few days I will be visiting the War Remnants Museum, so I think this will give me some more incite into this. Some other interesting facts were that when Vietnamese were asked if they loved and respected their parents over 99% said yes and the US was somewhere in the 70% range. Also in a measure of happiness Vietnam ranked the highest in Asia. After the talk was over I was worried that I wouldn’t have anyone to go explore with because everyone else was already off the ship so I went down to leave a note for Megan to call me when she got back. Before I even finished the note she came walking up with Lauren because Lauren had forgot her debit card so they were grabbing it real quick and then heading out. So they told me I had one minute to get ready and go back out with them so I ran to my room and grabbed a stack of one dollar bills and went back up to their room.

We got off the ship and got on the bus that would take us to town. We only had to wait about 10 minutes and then we were on our way. There were motorcycles everywhere! We got dropped off in the heart of the city and first headed to the ATM. This is when I got my first experience of crossing the street. There is a never ending flow of motorcycles so you just have to start walking and let them make their way around you. The key is to keep a steady pace because if you stop or speed up you throw them off. So we actually crossed about three different streets to get to the ATM and I was feeling pretty confident. After Lauren got her money we went back to the Ban Thanh Market where Lauren and Megan had already been and it has just about anything you could possibly want. They had already got some really cheap backpacks and I really wanted to get one too because I could really use a bigger one for my Bejing trip. So we walked around for a while and the Vietnamese people are really the nicest and happiest people I have met in any port so far. One lady called me over and had me sit down and started asking me questions and I felt like she was going to want money from me for something but she really just wanted to ask me things about the ship and old I was and how many people there were and all sorts of things. After this I got a ton of 2 dollar t-shirts for people back home and then really started searching for a backpack. I ended up getting a pretty blue 55 liter north face backpack for only 11 US dollars which I think would be over $100 back home, so I can’t wait to use it in China!

At this point we were ready for dinner! Earlier that day Lauren and Megan had ran into a couple from Arizona that was here in Vietnam because they had just adopted a baby girl and were going to bring her home. They told Lauren and Megan about some Texas BBQ place and Lauren really wanted to go there so we went all over trying to find it and asking people about and nobody knew what it was. Finally we found a book and looked it up and it had a different name than we thought and it wasn’t very close to where we were so we ended up talking to a guy from Australia and he said the restaurant we happened to be standing in front of was really good so we just went there because we were tired of searching. We ended up splitting a Mexican quesadilla and then I got chicken fajitas again which were really good, and a mango smoothie. I felt kind of bad for not getting Vietnamese food, but I plan to definitely get some in the next four days and I know my Mekong Delta trip will be taking us to a local restaurant. As in other countries we had a craving for something sweet after so we went to a little ice cream and coffee café across the street. They didn’t speak any English and the menu wasn’t in English but has somewhat of an English description so we were a little nervous about it. They brought out some tea for us right away and Megan and I ordered “Ice cream-chocolate” and Lauren got “Ice-cream-peppermint”. So Megan and I ended up with really good vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup which was actually exactly what I wanted but thought I would probably just get a scoop of regular chocolate, and Lauren’s was actually mint chocolate chip with chocolate syrup that was really good. When we were done the guy drew out 100,000 dong with his finger on the table and we paid and were on our way. The exchange rate is somewhere around 16000 dong to 1 dollar.

From here we decided to head back to the bus shop to get back to the ship. When we got to the bus we found out it wasn’t leaving for 25 more minutes and a couple of people noticed there was a chocolate shop right across from where the bus picked us up and of course I decided I needed to go check it out too. So I just went by myself because Megan and Lauren were going to stay on the bus and this meant I had to cross the street all by myself! Just as I was crossing another guy walked up next to me and was like I’m going with you I’m going with you! I felt pretty good knowing someone else trusted me to lead them across the street! Haha. So I went in and the chocolate was really fancy and expensive so I just bought a few little wrapped chocolates that were suppose to be milk chocolate but they were actually dark, which was fine because it was still really good. I crossed the street back to the bus totally by myself this time with Megan and Lauren cheering me on “Go Kristin it’s real life frogger!”. The bus left about 10 minutes later and we all shared stories on the bus of what our first day was like and semester at sea in general. One professor had already gone on the War Remnants Museum trip that I will be going on and had a lot of good things to say about that so I am pretty excited. Then we all got back on the ship and I decided to get a head start and write the first day of my blog now!

Day 2:

I slept in a little bit and got lunch on the ship and then went back into town with Andi and Amy. Our goal was to find a place to get our dresses made and do some shopping. It actually took us over an hour to get to the city because traffic was bad. When we finally got there we stopped in one dress shop but they said they couldn’t have them done in time so we kept walking. The next place was able to it but they had pretty high prices so we wanted to walk around some more and come back if we couldn’t find anywhere else. We ended up going to the Ben Thanh market again. I ended up buying a little north face backpack that I could use for day trips that I really love for only $4. We found some coffee place across from the market and got “coffee shakes” which were similar to frappaccinos but not quite as good. After walking around in the market for a while we decided to head back to the dress shop because even though it was expensive we thought they would be good quality and they were going to be 100% silk. The lady we had originally talked with had left for the day so we got fitted by another lady who gave us an even higher price, but mine was only $5 more so I didn’t bother arguing with her. When we were done we got back on the bus to go to the ship. We ended up getting back in time for dinner which was good and I just stayed on the ship after because my trip the next day left at 7.

Day 3:

I woke up at 6am to get ready for my Cu Chi tunnel trip and went to breakfast with Megan and Robyn who were also on the trip. We smuggled some boxed cereal into our backpacks and headed down to the buses. The tunnels were two hours away so I got comfortable with turned on my ipod and fell asleep. Before we got to the tunnels we stopped at a war memorial. There were 10,000 graves there but less than 25% of them actually had remains in them. Our guide explained that a lot of times they weren’t able to locate the actual bodies and this was meant as a way to remember their name. In the center there was a statue of a woman crying holding a dead soldier and behind was a tall monument with incense that were burning. There was also a place to burn incense in front of each of the grave stones.

From there we continued to the Cu Chi tunnels. This was the hottest and most humid day on the trip so far I think. We walked along a path and our guide uncovered a little whole in the ground covered by leafs and then had another demonstrate going into the tiny hole in the ground. We continued along the path along the path and stopped at different points for our guide to explain to us different things about the tunnels. The whole network of tunnels stretches 200 kilometers. We saw a lot of the traps that the Vietnamese used before they had access to guns which were very simple but also very effective. We then came to a gun range were we had the opportunity to shoot many of the different guns used in the war. Megan and I bought ten rounds for the AK47 and split them. You only got the ear covering when you were actually shooting so I had ringing in my ears for about the next hour.

As we walked out we got to see a woman making rice paper and then another guy that was making sandals out of tires that we could actually buy but I didn’t end up getting any.

Next we headed over to actually go into the tunnels! I honestly wasn’t feeling too excited about this because I’m a little claustrophobic but I knew I had to do it. So we climbed down these stairs first and then some more stairs before we were actually in the tunnel. We piled in one after another and it was small, dark and dirty. The next exit was only 200 feet away but once I was in there it was definitely the scariest moment for me on this whole trip. There was someone right in front of me and someone right behind me and the line stopped moving because people in front wanted to take there time and take pictures in the tunnel. Then a girl behind me was freaking out and crying because she was clearly also claustrophobic and this did not make me feel any better. So we eventually got out, probably after a minute or two but it felt like a lifetime. I can’t imagine living down there and the tunnels we were in were actually made 40% bigger than what they were during the war. I think they said you actually had to weigh less than 120 lbs to be able to fight from the tunnels. After this we got to go back to the hole in the ground that we saw when we first walked in and some of us got in to take pictures. After seeing other people get in and out successfully I did it too. Next we went and watched a video about the tunnels that was made during the war, which was pretty interesting and was very anti-American.

After the video we got back on the bus to go back to the ship and I ate my cereal from the morning and fell asleep for most of the ride again. We got back on the ship and had lunch and then decided to go back into town and try and buy our Japan Rail Passes. Robyn had bought hers the day before and showed us where to go, but when we got there it was already closed because they closed early on Saturdays. They wouldn’t be open again until Monday so we would have to find time to come back then. From here we had to go back to Ben Thanh Market to pick up some pants for Megan’s roommate Lauren because she in Cambodia. They were supposed to be ready the day before but when we got there we were told to walk around for five minutes and they would get them from the tailor. So we walked around and I ended up buying more stuff because it is just so cheap! We got back and she said 5 more minutes and after sitting there for 30 they were finally ready. The day before Megan had been to this coffee place called Highlands Coffee where she said they had the best mango smoothies ever so we decided to go there. They also have free internet if you buy something, but there was only one computer at the one we went to. There was a couple using the computer so we ordered our smoothies and waited for them to get off. The mango smoothie really was amazing, I could have ordered another one! Also I forgot to mention earlier we had bought a lonely planet book on Japan so we checked that out while we drank our smoothies to try and figure out what we would do with our rail passes. We couldn’t find anything out about Disneyland in Tokyo in the book so once the computer was finally available we looked it up. All the hotels around the park are really expensive, but ticket prices were actually cheaper than the US which was good. So we haven’t decided on that yet, I think we will just have to see what happens when we are actually there. We also checked our emails and stuff like that and then we had to go because we told Robyn we would meet her at 5:30 for dinner at this place called Pho 24 that everyone had been saying had amazing food. So we walked over to the restaurant which was behind the market and sat down and Robyn walked in a few minutes later and her friend Brittany also joined us. There was a little confusion when we were ordering because we wanted four combos which came with beef pho, spring rolls and a soda. They brought out Megan and my pho first and then they brought spring rolls for Brittany and Robyn. We thought they would bring the rest later but they just brought the bill so I was disappointed I didn’t get to try the spring rolls but the pho was really good and it filled me up anyway since I already had the smoothie. Pho is like a soup with noodles and beef and I’m going to try to attach the picture from the restaurant if the internet is fast enough.

After dinner we went to a grocery store and I bought 3 boxes of cereal, granola bars and some other stuff. After this everyone wanted to get ice cream and of course that sounded good to me so we went to this place Kom Bach Dang Ice Cream that we had passed each time we left the shuttle bus stop that was always full of people. I got vanilla with chocolate sauce again and it was really good! After this we were ready to get back to the ship so we walked to the bus stop and headed home. Once I got back to my room I watched some Prison Break which is my new favorite show then worked out and went to bed.

Day 4:

I got up early again because I had a trip to the Mekong Delta that left at 8 so I got breakfast with Megan at 7:15 because she was on the trip too. We got on one of three buses because there were over 80 students on the trip. It was two hours to the Mekong but we would be making a rest stop before we got there. Like always I put on my Ipod and caught up on sleep while I could and when I woke up we were at the rest stop. The place was actually really nice, they sold snacks and had a gift shop and a little lake in the back with places to sit and relax. We were there for about 15 minutes and then we hit the road again. We had one more stop before the Mekong which was a Pagoda. Out front there was a huge statue of Buddha that we looked at first and then we made our way inside. The entrance was on the right side and as you walk in to the right was tables that had food ready on them and the place where the people worshipped was on the left. In the middle the roof was open and there was a rock statue sort of thing. At the time we walked in there was actually a service going on and we were still able to go inside. We took off our shoes at the entrance and we could hear the Buddhist chanting. I walked around the corner and there were about 5 men in orange robes, one was kneeling and singing the chant and the other were standing to the side playing different instruments. The rest of the people were wearing white robes and also kneeling on the ground and singing along with the chant. They were all facing a golden statue of Buddha while doing this. I walked out and put my shoes on because we would be leaving soon and just as I did the chanting stopped and some men in orange robes came out hit these drums that were outside the entrance and everyone walked out and headed to the tables for food. I stayed out of the way and just watched to see what they would do. The men in orange robes all sat at the table in the middle and everyone else went to the other tables. By now I really had to get back to the bus so I left.

After we left our guide asked if anyone wanted to take 15 minutes to walk through a market before we went to the river but nobody did so we just drove by. About 10 minutes later we were at the Mekong Delta. We got off the bus and loaded on a boat big enough for all of us to fir on and took a 20 minutes ride across the river. From there we could see this bridge being built across the river that looked really cool. We got off the big boat and onto smaller ones that only fit about 9 people. I got a seat in the front which was really nice and I got some good pictures. The ride was short and we got off and walked down a path where we had to cross this bridge made of two logs and a little hand rail that was a little scary. This brought us to a coconut candy “factory” which was really just a little room where they made it. They had some candy that was just made for us to try and it was really good so I ended up buy a bunch for everyone back home, so hopefully they will still be good when I get back. After this went back to some tables where we drank some honey tea that was really good. After this we got back on the 9 person boats for another short ride. We got off and got into these carts that were pulled by horses. This took us to a little place where we sat down and were served some really good fruit. We had mango, pineapple, grapefruit, dragon fruit, and I think the last one is called jack fruit and is actually the largest fruit in the world…or at least that’s what someone at my table said. While we ate delicious fruit two women sang some songs for us. We left there and got onto these tiny row boats that only four people could sit in. There was a guy in the back and a little boy in the front rowing and we definitely had the best guys because we passed about four boats! This brought us back to the big boat that our whole bus fit on, which then took us all to lunch.

I had talked to someone who went on this trip already and she recommended asking for the vegetarian meal because the normal meal was a big fish that they brought out and everyone ate from. As I saw the fish being brought out I knew I had made the right choice! Our meal had awesome spring rolls, bread, soup, crunchy noodles, rice and some other things I’m sure I’m forgetting but it was really good. I did get a picture of the elephant ear fish that everyone else ate though. We got back on the big boat after we ate and it took us back to the bus. We had a nice 2 hour drive home and had time to shower and relax before dinner. After dinner Megan and I decided to go back to highlands coffee and bring her laptop. Luckily the bus ride to town only took about 20 minutes and everything stayed open late even though it was a Sunday. So we got our wonderful mango smoothies and also some green tea and mango ice cream which were both really good. We took turn on Megan’s computer and found out that the class schedule was up for the fall which I was pretty excited about because I’ve been worried about trying to get the classes I need at times that allow me to work too. We also pulled up the train schedules for Japan and saved them, and luckily the trains come pretty much ever 5 minutes. Then we just took time to check things like email and facebook which is always nice. After this we went and looked at some stores at the mall and Megan bought a really nice north face jacket, I probably would have got one too but I didn’t bring much money with me. It would come in handy in China and Japan where it’s actually going to be cold! Then I wanted to go back to the grocery store to try and find cream cheese because they always have bagels on the ship and no cream cheese, which for me totally defeats the purpose of a bagel… but unfortunately I couldn’t find any. After this we got back on the bus back to the ship and I watched some more prison break and went to bed.

Day 5:
I woke up early and got some breakfast and headed into town by myself to get my rail pass and pick up the dress that I had made before I had my trip to the war remnants museum at 1. I got off the bus and walked to the building that had the rail passes and went up to the 16^th floor where they sold them. A bunch of other students had the same idea as me and when we walked in a lady asked us to come back because they were really busy in the mornings. I explained to here that I could not come back and luckily she sold me one. It cost $281 to get a pass that will take you anywhere in Japan for 7 days and I’m hoping it will be worth it. Japan is suppose to be the most expensive place we go to so I’m a little worried about finding hotels and everything but I’m sure it will work out. After I got my pass I walked back to the Highlands café that had a computer in it and luckily no one was on it so I sat down and someone came over and took my order. This time I got an ice blended coffee which was equally as awesome as the smoothies we had gotten. It was really nice to be out on my own and have time to write emails and look stuff up without feeling rushed. In most of the ports they scare you away from doing anything on your own but I felt pretty confident after the first four days there. I still had time before I had to pick up my dress at 10 to I decided to walk to the market and see if there was anything else I wanted to buy. On my way there I was just walking down the street looking at the different people and I see this woman sitting up against the wall and I look at her face and her eyes are open but she is not blinking or moving and I am pretty sure she was dead, I can’t really describe the look on her face but I think it will stay with me forever. I didn’t know what to do and I looked around to see if anyone else was noticing this and they weren’t so I just continued down the street and tried to think of other possibilities than her being dead. I crossed the street and heard a siren of an ambulance coming and I thought maybe it was for her, but it just kept going down the street. I got to the market and tried to forget about it and walked through the rows and rows of stuff. I bought a few more things and then went to the dress shop. They told me my dress would not be ready until 3, which did not make me very happy because I was on a trip until 5:30, but I decided I could probably not go back to the ship from the museum and just walk to the dress shop and get it.

I wasn’t ready to head back to the ship just yet because it was still early so I walked over to a mall and just wondered around for a while without buying anything. I walked back to the bus stop and the bus had just got there so it wouldn’t be leaving for at least another 30 minutes because the bus can’t leave until the next one gets there. There is this burger place right by the bus stop called Lotteria…I think… so I went in there and got a chicken burger meal which was pretty good. After I was done eating the bus still didn’t leave for another 30 minutes but I had time so it didn’t worry me. I got back to the ship and relaxed and got my stuff ready for my trip which left in about 30 minutes. I walked down to the bus when the time came and this trip only had about 20 of us which was really nice. The tour guide informed us that we would first be going to the UPI photographer’s house which was 45 minutes away. I knew this trip was the war remnants museum and UPI photographer but I didn’t realize we were actually going to his house so I was pretty excited about this. We got to his house and he introduced himself to all of us. His name is Hoang Van Cuong and he served as a photographer throughout the whole Vietnam War. He showed us a memorial he had made in his yard for the 200 journalist that were killed during the war.

After this he lead us into a room in his home where he had some photos displayed and we all sat on the floor in a circle and were able to ask him questions. He also explained some of the pictures on the wall and passed other ones around the circle for us too look at. His English wasn’t that good so he had our tour guide do a lot of translating. I was amazed at how happy he was and he called us family as we sat and talked. The professor that was our trip leader was actually a Vietnam veteran so he had a lot of questions. After about an hour we left his house and headed to the War Remnants Museum. The first two rooms I walked through weren’t as bad as I was expecting and then outside they had a lot of the planes and takes to look at. Next I went into the main building and they had a lot of pictures of injured people and the effects of Agent Orange. A lot of the pictures were of children and they even had deformed babies in glass jars and it was all really overwhelming. I can’t really explain the feeling that I got looking at all the pictures but it was a mixture of sadness and a sick to my stomach feeling and so much more. I didn’t really take out my camera at all and some people would stand in front of the different things in the museum and smile and take pictures and it just seemed weird to me. They also had a video playing that I watched a little bit of and then went to the next couple of buildings. When it was 4:30 and it was time to meet and go back to the bus I was definitely ready to get out of there. I didn’t really feel like doing anything else but I knew I had to get my dress and luckily the bus dropped a lot of us off at the shuttle bus stop so that we could walk around some more before on ship time.

I walked straight to the dress shop and found Andi and Amy were there too waiting for their dresses. Mine was done and they brought it down and they made it too small so the lady said she could fix it in 15 minutes. I already knew that I didn’t like it though, it wasn’t the right color and it didn’t look like it did in the picture I gave them, but I waited anyways hoping maybe it still wouldn’t fit and I could use this as an excuse not to get it or maybe it would look ok once it actually fit. A little later they brought down Amy’s dress and we had asked for the exact same color and hers was actually the right one and mine was not. After close to an hour they finally brought mine back down and it fit but I just didn’t like it and I explained to them about the color and they tried to tell me I was wrong and I didn’t feel like arguing because I was still feeling sick to my stomach so I said just keep the deposit I don’t want it and left. I went back to the bus stop and got on the bus and it was so full that a bunch of people had to stand on the way back. I watched the guy next to me pour some alcohol into a plastic bag and hide it in his stuff, I never saw if he got caught though. It took about 15 minutes to get on the ship because everyone brought back so much stuff back and it all had to be searched. I got on about 5 minutes before dinner was going to stop being served so I ran up and they actually had plain pasta with the sauce on the side which made me extremely happy, but I still went up and got a smoothie and I finally started to feel a little bit better about the day. I tried to get to bed early because it was back to school the next day. This whole traveling and then going to school thing is not easy. We had a global studies test in two days so I did a little studying for that too.

After Vietnam:

So I actually had to go and buy more internet minutes because I used them all up! I also bought a phone card and got to call home for the first time which was really nice but you only get 13 minutes for $20 which is not nearly enough. Then today was the global studies test which didn’t seem too hard so hopefully I stayed in the 90 percent range! I also got my dreaded finance test back and I got an 86 which I was pretty happy with. We had our preport meeting for China, and I really can’t believe we are going to be there already tomorrow. I have the first day to explore Hong Kong and then my trip leaves at 8am the second day for Beijing! I’m hoping to just bring my laptop with me and write my blog as I go because it gets harder to write this all out the more time that passes and it feels like it takes forever. Maybe our hotel will even have free wifi! I think that is all I have for now, so 6 days in China 2 days at sea and then 4 days in Japan!

I love highlands coffee!

2008-03-30T19:17:00.000-07:00

I am in highlands coffee in Vietnam which has free internet...yay! Just wanted to get on my blog really quick to tell everyone I love it here! I will hopefully have my full post up in the next day or two because we are leaving tonight :( I just bought my Japan Rail Pass which was pretty expensive but now I can take a train anywhere in Japan! Megan and I are going to do it all independetly and hopefully go to Hiroshima and Tokyo. I can't wait, but first I we will be in China, which means the Great Wall! Anyway this keyboard is really hard to use so I have to say goodbye.

Malaysia

2008-03-26T21:43:00.001-07:00

So we are going to be in Vietnam in the morning and I am just now starting my blog on Malaysia! I had a finance test today and I have spent every waking hour studying for it, so hopefully it paid off, I won’t know till after Vietnam. And we also have our next global studies test right after Vietnam… yay! On the bright side we actually gained an hour last night which was amazing and I got my laundry back! So now back to Malaysia, I’ll try to write as much as I can but I’m short on time.

Day 1:
I got up and went to breakfast and my Kuala Lumpur trip was supposed to meet in the union at 8:30 so that we could leave on a tender at 9. My roommate and some other friend were doing this trip as well so I was pretty excited. So we check in and find out because there are so many people they split us into two hotels and everyone I knew was in a different hotel. So I wasn’t too thrilled about that and then we ended up sitting in the union for almost 2 hours before the ship was cleared. We finally head down to the tender which would take us to land! The tenders we used are actually the lifeboats on the ship. So we got on the bus and our tour guide gave us the plan for the day and the four hour bus ride was really close to six but we would be stopping for lunch which would help break it up. Penang, where we were docked, is actually an island so the first thing we had to do was drive across a bridge, which is actually the third longest in the world at a length of 13.5 kilometers. So that was really cool. I fell asleep after this but when I woke up the scenery was so beautiful. There were beautiful green trees and mountains all around us.
We stopped for lunch at a really nice Chinese restaurant. They first brought out tea and soup and then they started bringing out all different huge plates of food for each table to share. It was all really good and fruit was for desert and I had some really good mango. We loaded back on the bus for the rest of the drive and I think we made one more stop before we got to KL where I bought some snacks. We got into the city and we got our first glimpse of the Petronas towers which was really exciting. I believe they are the highest twin towers in the world. We pulled up to our hotel which was across from the Times Square mall and right next to 7-11 and Starbucks. I found another girl who also wanted to go to the other hotel and we put our stuff in our room and went over to the Times Square mall to meet up with some people from the other hotel. From there we walked to the other hotel which wasn’t too far and decided to just take their bus to dinner.
The bus took us to the Sri Melayu Restaurant for dinner. There was a huge buffet with all different Malaysian food. I even tried durian which is a fruit that smells really bad. They actually had fake fruits on display because the real one would stink up the whole place. Supposedly it smells bad but tastes good, but I did not like it at all. Once we got our food there was a cultural show for about 45 minutes. I got back on the bus to my hotel for the night and just showered and went to bed.

Day 2:
I woke up and went down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. I had this chocolate cereal that they also had in India which is so good! After this I got on the bus for a tour of the city. The first stop was the Royal Palace. The King lives here, but he doesn’t really have a political power. The one power our guide told us about was the king’s ability to pardon someone. There are guards out front and they have a change of guards every half hour or hour, but it didn’t happen while we were there. We did get to take pictures next to them though. From here we went to the National Museum, but it was under construction so only one level was open. We still got to see some cool things there though. After this we went to the Lake Garden and National Monument. The National Monument was actually designed by the same person that did the one in the US. The monument was really beautiful and I was really glad we got to see it. We walked down to the garden from the monument and then got back on the bus. After this we went to a spot where we could all get out and get a good picture of the Petronas towers. I was disappointed that we didn’t get to go up in them, but we went to the KL tower next and got to go up and get a nice view of the city.
From here we went to the central market for lunch. This was another Chinese restaurant that was really good. I found Andi and Amy and we decided to stay at this market instead of going back to the hotel on the bus. We shopped around some and got some gelato, yum! From here we caught a cab to Chinatown. Everything was so cheap I could have spent hours there. I got a dress and some shirts and some other stuff I can’t remember. We went back to my hotel and got my things so I could just stay at their hotel and then we walked to theirs. The semester at sea group was going two hours away for dinner where there were fireflies, but we decided not to go because we didn’t want to go on the long drive and Andi and I don’t like seafood and that’s what the food was going to be. So we took a short nap and decided we had enough cultural food and we wanted pizza hut. So we asked the hotel where the nearest one was and they kind of laughed at us and pointed us in somewhat of the right direction. We passed more Starbucks, McDonalds, KFC, 7-11s and other places from back home on the way. The next day they were having the Formula 1 race so we passed a stage where they were going to have a concert. I was also in Durban South Africa when they were having the Formula 1, it’s following us! After our delicious pizza we walked back to the hotel and watched some American Idol that we found on TV. We ran into some other SASers that were going to this club called the Beach and went with them there for a little bit and then came back and went to bed.

Day 3:
We woke up and got breakfast at the hotel and then walked over to the Times Square mall. The first thing we did was get some Starbucks. Then we looked around the mall for a while before we had to head back to the hotel. We went back and packed all out stuff for the trip back and got on the bus. Before we left KL we went to lunch at a restaurant in one of the hotels nearby. This was another Chinese place like the one from the first day, but the food wasn’t nearly as good. The best part was the fried rice. We got back on the buses to Penang and I slept most of the way. The process of tendering back to the ship was horrible. We had about 75 people on a tender with backpacks full of stuff and they always search you when you get back on the ship. So they were letting 10 on at a time and the rest of us were stuck waiting on the rocking tender. After about 30 minutes I finally got off and they weren’t serving dinner anymore, but they ended up making sandwiches for the people on our trip which was nice. After this we watched some CSI that someone bought in Chinatown and then went to bed.

Day 4:
We wanted to go to an internet café so we asked a taxi driver to take us one and he takes us to this mall which is pretty far away and it didn’t even end up having one. So we got some Starbucks again which was really good and then looked around for a camera for my friend Amy because hers had broke in Mauritius. We then stumbled across a movie theater and decided to see 27 dresses. It only cost $3 and it was nicer then any theater I had been to in the US. There is assigned seating so you pick out your seats when you buy the tickets. The movie was really good and it was nice to do something that reminded me of being back home. Next the mall had a Forever 21 so we had to check it out, but it was way more expensive than the ones in the US. We went to TGI Fridays for lunch and I got chicken fajitas which were amazing. We did some more shopping and then decided to find an actual internet café.
So we found another cab driver and he took us to this other shopping area and tells us there is an internet café right up these stairs. We started walking up them and it was a little creepy because there was no sign or anything. We walk in and there are a ton of locals on computers playing video games. So we went to see how much it was and we paid about 35 cents for 30 minutes of internet. We would have stayed longer but we had arranged for the cab driver to wait for us and take us back to the ship after. The internet was so fast which made me really happy, I could have stayed for hours. I wish I had my pictures to upload. Once time was up we went back to the ship. I showered and relaxed for a bit and then we went back out to this restaurant that was right where the tenders dropped us off. I had a little bit for dinner on the ship so I just ordered an appetizer and desert and they were both really good. After hanging out there for a while we got back on the ship and went to bed.

Day 5:
Megan and I planned to hang out this day so she wanted to bring her laptop to Starbucks and go on the internet for a while and then do some shopping. We caught the 9:30 tender and then asked a cab driver to take us to the closest Starbucks. We got there just as it was opening and I drank a frappaccino while Megan went on the internet because my laptop battery doesn’t work anymore so I left my computer on the ship. When she was done she was going to let me go on hers but so many people got online that the connection was too slow to do anything. From here we walked around this 6 story mall for what seemed like hours and didn’t really find anything. We weren’t sure where to find the type of stuff we were actually looking for. We ended up going to the McDonalds for lunch because the other food places did not look very good. We ended up finding an internet café up on the 6th or 7th floor of this mall, the malls in other countries are huge! So we went on for a little bit and then tried to go back and find pants that Megan had seen earlier and now wanted to get but we could not find them because the place was so big. Eventually we just went back to the ship and I just stayed on because I wanted to study for my Finance test.

Vietnam day 1!

I am just getting on now to post this and we have already arrived in Vietnam. Unfortunately I have an FDP for my finance class which will be four hours on the ship listening to some guy talk about the business conditions of Vietnam and it won’t be over till 5pm! The city is about 8 kilometers away so they have set up a bus shuttle service for us. I woke up at 6:45 to watch the ship go up the Saigon River which was really neat. I got breakfast and went back to sleep until we arrived and it was time for the diplomatic briefing. We had about six different US government officials talk to us. One woman really stuck out to me because she had actually escaped Vietnam when she was 7 years old after the Vietnam War and was one of the “boat people”. Her family and a group of about 20 people got on a little boat to try and make it to Hong Kong or Thailand I think it was and they had brought food and water for only 3 days. On the first day the first engine on the boat broke and on the end of the second day the other engine broke too. They ran out of food in the three days and ended up drifting for about two weeks. It rained one day and they were able to get a little bit of water and then they shaved off wood from the front of the boat to steam the ocean water just enough to moisten their lips. Eventually they saw land which happened to be the Philippines. She lived there for a year before someone sponsored her family to come to the US. Now 27 years later she is back working in the new Vietnam. Anyway I just thought it was a really interesting story and there is more I can’t remember. The ship got cleared at about 11 and everyone is rushing to get off so I won’t have a chance to set foot in Vietnam before my 1pm FDP unless I get off and right back on, so I am going to post this get lunch on the ship and head to the Union and maybe I will be able to do something after. I will update when we leave Vietnam hopefully!

Also they updated the whole semester at sea website so the link I gave earlier to tell you how to send me mail has changed so here is the new one, but at this point I think you can only send to Hawaii or Costa Rica. I would still love mail though!!

http://www.semesteratsea.org/voyages/current-voyage/staying-in-touch.php

India

2008-03-18T16:22:00.001-07:00

In preparation for India I felt like a lot of people over exaggerated what we would see. Before arrival I expected unbearable heat, horrible stench, and not being able to eat anything without getting sick. I did not find the heat that bad or any worse then other ports we have been to and the smell at most points was not that bad at all, except maybe a couple times driving through Chennai. Mostly there was just burning smell. I never had Indian food before but I really loved it and I didn’t get sick at all. I heard someone say we should stay away from dairy, but I had the best ice cream ever while I was in India! I also successfully crossed the street and took a few rides in rickshaws and made it back in one piece. I also never had to use a squat toilet which surprised me, I didn’t even see one. So anyway here’s what I did in my 5 days in India…

Day 1: We’re in India!!
I woke up at 6 am to see the sunrise but when I got outside it was cloudy and we could just barely see the lights of the city in the distance. I waited out there for a while but decided to go back to bed. The ship didn’t end up getting cleared until almost 11 and then everyone on the ship had to go up to the faculty lounge to pick up two pieces of paper that you had to have with you at all times when in India. Originally they thought we would have to have out passport to leave the ship, but this got changed at the last minute. I had a trip that left at 12:30 and had planned on exploring Chennai before I had to go but because the clearing of the ship took so long I just stayed and ate lunch on the ship before I had to leave. All we could really sea from the ship are the hundreds of little Hyundai cars that were soon to be shipped to Australia and some buildings in the distance, somehow just not what I was expecting.
The trip I had scheduled was for by managerial finance class and we were going to visit Tata Consulting Services. The parent company Tata is one of the two largest companies in India and they have 98 operating companies in seven business sectors. Tata Motors is releasing a car called the Nano that will only cost $2,500. So anyway… I headed out to the bus area to meet with my trip around 12:15. There was a group of Indians who had gathered outside the ship and they all wanted to take pictures of us. It was interesting to be on the other side of the camera for once. There later ended up being some articles in the newspaper about semester at sea which I am going to try to get a copy of. After standing around for about twenty minutes we got on our bus and headed to TCS which was about 45 minutes away.
On the way there the tour guide talked a little about Chennai and my Finance professor told us about Tata. I just starred out the window the whole time and tried to absorb everything. Traffic is pretty crazy, there are a lot of rickshaws and motorcycles and bicycles. It doesn’t seem like there are really lanes because everyone just weaves in and out and just make sure to stay out of the way of the buses. Apparently people are killed or injured by buses everyday. Another interesting thing is that cow are sacred in India and I was told people would be move devastated if a cow got run over than a person. So I saw a lot of cows on the side of the street. We also passed a lot of temples.
We finally pulled up and our guide from Tata told us we had to leave our cameras in the bus because it’s a big hassle to bring them into the building, so we all got back on the bus and put on cameras away. Next we walked in and everyone got a badge with our name on it. From here we were lead into a back room that looked just like a class room. For the next couple hours we had three different speakers talk to us about what TCS was all about and business in India and stuff like that. We took a couple breaks and the first time we got some fresh juice and I think half of everyone was afraid they would die if they drank anything in India, but I tried it anyway. It was fresh watermelon, which I’m sure would be good if I liked watermelon… so I didn’t finish it. Later we got coffee and cookies which was nice. After all the presentations we just got back on the bus and left and did not get to tour the building or anything, which I thought was kind of disappointing. We got back to the ship around 5:30 and because I had to meet to leave for my trip at 3am the next morning I decided to stay on board. So I just grabbed some dinner, packed, worked out and then watched a movie and went to bed.

Day 2: The longest day ever…but worth it!
My alarm went off at 2:45am, which I normally wouldn’t be too thrilled about, but I was going to the Taj!!! So I jumped out of bed and got dressed and grabbed my backpack and headed to the union. They had juice and pastries out for breakfast which was nice. There were a couple different trips leaving at this time, so I found mine and sat down. We all had to turn in plastic bags with all our liquids in them to the trip leader and one bag with all them in it would get checked because you couldn’t carry on any liquids. Luckily everyone actually made it to the union on time and we headed down to our bus to the airport.
I’m pretty sure I fell asleep on the way to the airport because before I knew it we were there. We piled out of the bus and waited for our trip leaders to get our boarding passes. This was much quicker than in South Africa. Then we put luggage tags on our carry-on because they get stamped after you through security. We went upstairs to go through the security check and there were separate lines for guys and girls. The girl line was significantly longer because of the number of girls from semester at sea. The area were they patted us down was surrounded by a curtain so that nobody could see. By the time we all got through our plane was boarding. The airline was flew was King Fisher which is actually a beer company. There were TVs in the back of every seat which was really surprising. A lot of it was in English and they had TV shows like Friends and Doogie Houser on one channel, and some music videos from the US on another. I checked this out for maybe 10 minutes and then fell back asleep. When ever I fly in the US and I’m sleeping the flight attendants usually just skip over you when bringing food and snacks but on this airline they woke you up with “excuse me excuse me”. They had a hot meal but I was too tired to wake up and eat it so I just went back to sleep and the next thing I knew we were landing in Dehli.
The rest of the day is kind of a blur because we spent about the next 12 hours on a bus, so I will try to remember all the details. We walked through the airport to our bus and my trip was divided into three different buses because there were so many of this. Our guide explained to us that we would first take a bus tour of New and Old Delhi and then get lunch and then have a five hour bus ride to Agra, which was news to us because our itinerary said we had a two hour train ride. The other bad news was we were suppose to get back late the 3rd day but our flight got changed to be back in Chennai at noon, so there was A LOT of complaining which got a little annoying but I didn’t worry about it too much because I was just so excited to be on my way to the Taj. So we drove all around Dehli and we saw a lot of really cool sites but we never got to get out of the bus to look at them and I didn’t have a window seat so I really couldn’t get any good pictures. Most of the people on the bus slept through the whole thing. We had one stop before lunch which was a place that made rugs. It was a really fancy place and they served us tea and biscuits and tea and told us about the process of making the rugs. They were really nice, but they started out around a thousand dollars so none of us could afford anything. They also had more shopping upstairs but it was really expensive. So after about 45 minutes there we left and headed to lunch, hooray!
The place we went to for lunch was really fancy, it kind of reminded me of a wedding reception. We sat down and they served us naan and soup which was really good. The bad thing was we had to pay for drinks, but no big deal. Then we went up to the buffet for about 20 different choices of food. I just got a little bit of everything because I wasn’t sure if I would like any of it, but I loved all of it and went back for more. The food wasn’t spicy at all and I’m guessing that was because they knew we probably couldn’t handle it. They even served us the most amazing ice cream for desert. After we filled up with as much food as possible we got on the bus to head to our hotel in Agra. I slept for most of the first half until we made a rest stop. I went in and bought some cool t-shirts for around $5 which I thought was great but later saw the same ones for about $2! We had about 30 minutes at this place and then we got back on the bus for the final stretch. The rest of the way I had some interesting conversations with the girls sitting around me so it helped the time go by faster. As it got dark the pollution seemed to be getting a lot worse and it smelled a lot like smoke because people were lighting fires. Traffic got pretty bad in Agra but we finally made it to our hotel sometime between 8 and 9 I think.
First thing they gave us the keys to our rooms and we went up and put our stuff in the room. I got on the elevator to go up to the 3rd floor and somehow the girl next to me drops her key in the crack by the elevator door just as it closing and I tried to push the open door button but it didn’t work. Then she tried to pry them open which didn’t seem like a good idea to me. She was freaking out to much that she made everyone think the elevator was stuck there and we were really packed in, but in a minute the doors opened and we were on the third floor… thank goodness! So Keirstyn, my roommate, and I threw our stuff down and headed back downstairs to get dinner, a little hesitant about the elevator, but it was fine. They had all kinds of food and again I tried a little bit of everything and it was all good. We even got ice cream for desert again! After we ate we headed up to our room. There was a big TV so we decided to flip through the channels and ended up watching Bones, which wasn’t a very good show, but we missed the tv shows from back home. After this we went to bed.

Day 3: The Taj
Wake up call was at 5:15 so that we could leave by 6 to see the Taj at sunrise. We got dressed and headed down to the bus which only left about 5 minutes late. The drive only took about 10 to 15 minutes. Our tour guide told us we would not be aloud to bring any bags inside, only our cameras. If I wasn’t told that we were at the site of the Taj Mahal I would have no idea because I couldn’t see it from where we were. We walked down a path until was got to one of the red sandstone gates. Here we had to go through security similar to the airport where we were separated by male and female and patted down. They also gave us little booties to put over our shoes if we wanted to go inside. We walked further inside and still didn’t see anything, but then over one of the walls we saw the top of the Taj sticking out and got really excited. Finally we got to the main entrance right in front of it and just stared in awe of the beauty. We took some pictures but then we had to go meet with our group for group picture that we got as a part of our trip. After we took the picture we had about an hour to explore before we had to meet back.
I ran into Megan and we took some pictures outside and then decided to go see the inside of the Taj. We put on our booties and walked up the stairs and over to the entrance. The inside is only lit by one chandelier and any light coming from inside so it took our eyes a minute to adjust. The inside was a lot smaller than I had imagined. In the center were the tombs of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal, but there actual bodies were deeper down in the mausoleum. Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal as a memorial for his wife who died while giving birth to their 14th child. While I was inside I got this really eerie feeling that is hard to explain. We came back outside and took some more pictures and then headed back to our meeting point. We all walked back to the buses and by this time a lot of the monkeys had come out along the pathway we walked down. There were also a lot of vendors selling Taj Mahal souvenirs and they were very persistent. We got back on the buses and went to the hotel where breakfast was waiting for us.
After we ate we got back on the buses and headed to Fatehpur Sikri which is a deserted city. The ride took about an hour. Once we were there we got to see some really nice red sandstone palaces. After this we went back to the hotel for lunch. After lunch they wanted to take us to a place where marble is made but none of the students wanted to go so we asked to be taken somewhere to shop. So the bus literally takes us across the street and then the guide tells us there are some shops we can go to back on the other side of the street where the hotel was. This didn’t make much sense to me but I guess she was mad that we didn’t go to the marble factory. I didn’t have any money so I found an ATM and got cash and then found a guy to cross the street with us, which is seriously scary! It has been compared to real life frogger. We only had time to look in one shop at this point and I didn’t end up finding anything. We got back on the bus and headed to the Agra Fort. This was also a really cool place to visit and you could actually see the Taj Mahal from it, but it was really foggy so it was hard to get a good picture. When we were done here we headed back to the Taj Mahal for sunset. We didn’t see much of a sunset because it was too overcast, but it was nice to see the beauty of the Taj one last time.
We headed back to the hotel to pick up box dinners because we had to get on a train to Dehli. There was a pizza hut right next to our hotel so a lot of us decided to run in there real quick and get pizza instead of box lunches. Something I noticed is how much bigger portion sizes are in the US than other countries. A medium pizza here was supposed to feed two but it was actually the size of an individual pizza back home. We also picked up our box lunches in case we got hungry later. The bus took us to the train station and as we got out I was carrying the juice from my lunch and I had left the rest because I didn’t plan on eating it. Just as we got of a man with elephantitus in his legs saw that I was carrying the juice and asked if he could have it. I gave it to him without a second thought, forgetting that we were told not to give anything away because we might get swarmed by people. Luckily nobody noticed and I just kept walking to the train station. The poverty here was really evident because we got there pretty late at night and a lot of people were lying down with blankets and you could tell this is pretty much where they lived. Here the people didn’t ask us for money, only for food. It was so hard to ignore the kids as they came up and just wanted something to eat. A few students ended up giving there food to them, and I will never forget this little boy who had to be about 4 and how happy he was when a girl gave him her boxed lunch. About 30 minutes later the train pulled up and we all got on. We each had a seat which was nice and to our surprise they even served us dinner and ice cream for desert! The ride was about 2 and a half hours. We got to Dehli around 10:30 and got on buses to our hotel which was about 20 minutes away.
We pulled up to the Hotel Ashok and I could not believe how nice it was, probably the nicest hotel I have ever stayed at. We walked in and they had a big welcome semester at sea sign. We got our rooms and brought our stuff up. It had the most comfortable bed ever. We went down to the coffee shop to get a snack and hung out with some other SASers. Then we asked if they had internet and they did but we had to pay so I split a half hour with someone and then headed up to the room to go to bed.

Day 4: Back to Chennai
We had another lovely 5 am wakeup call for breakfast at 6 and then we left at 7. A lot of people decided to stay up all night and drink and go to the club that was in the hotel and 4 people from our trip didn’t make it to our bus so we left without them. We headed to the airport and got on our plane and once we boarded we were stuck on the runway for over an hour waiting to take off. Finally we did and I watched some more TV! We landed and then had an hour bus ride back to the ship, and I was never so happy to be back! The ship is like home now. At this point I was so exhausted that I just went to sleep until my friend Amy called because it was my roommate’s birthday and they wanted to decorate the room. After this we went to dinner and decided to go out. So we got dressed and walked to where we could catch a rickshaw and we headed to hotel where we went dancing and ran into some other semester at sea people. At one point it was pouring rain which was a little scary, but we made it out alive. Everything closes down around 11 so we headed back to the ship and when we got there a bunch of trips where getting back, but luckily we cut the line because we didn’t have bags to be searched. I got back and went to bed because I was still really tired.

Day 5:
I ended up sleeping in until lunch time, so I went up and got lunch with Andi and then we wanted to find the post office and do some shopping. We walked off the ship and it was the hottest day we had so far. We eventually found a rickshaw to take us the post office because we couldn’t find it walking. We weren’t sure where to shop so we asked to go to the only place we remembered hearing about which was Spencers Plaza. On the way there our rickshaw got a flat tire which was really scary and luckily we lasted until we were across from Spencers. We had to cross the street but we were getting pretty good at it by this point. I was disappointed that Spencers is actually like a 5 story mall. We walked around and I didn’t find anything, I was hoping to find a better place so we left after about an hour. We got a rickshaw back to the dock where there was a shop and things were overpriced there too so I just bought a cool wall hanging and that was it. I wish I could go back and do more shopping because so many people got great things, I really need to step up my shopping in the next ports. So we got back to the ship and just stayed on for the rest of the time. Since we were back early we got to go through customs without having to wait in any lines which was nice. We didn’t have class the next day so we stayed up and got cheeseburgers after on ship time and hung out for a while before going to bed.

Post India:
Last night was the crew talent show which was amazing!! We get to Penang tomorrow, so I really had rush to type this blog up because I didn’t want to be 2 countries behind, so sorry I am missing a lot of details as it got closer to the end. Also I got 92 on my second global studies test…hooray! My plans for Malaysia are to go to Kuala Lampur (KL) and I can’t wait! We are going to have to tender while in Malaysia so that should be an interesting experience. After we leave we only have 3 days at sea and we’re at Vietnam and then two to China and two to Japan… I’m now beginning to appreciate the long stretches we had at sea before because it is really hard to get anything done. And I haven’t had laundry since Mauritius and may not get it until after Vietnam!! So I had fun washing a bunch of clothes in my sink today and I’m hoping they will dry by the morning. Anyway miss you all and I should have my Malaysia post up in a week or so. Happy Easter if I can’t get online on Sunday!

Mauritius

2008-03-09T20:09:00.001-07:00

Before this trip I had never heard of Mauritius, so I’m assuming a lot of the people reading this have not either. Mark Twain said “You gather the idea that Mauritius was made first and then heaven, and that heaven was copied after Mauritius”. The 720 square mile island is located in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar. It has a population of 1,200,000 people. Back in 1773 83% of the island was covered in forest and today less than 2% of the island is forest. The island also used to be home to the dodo bird! So now that you have a little background let me tell you what I did with my four days there…

Day 1:

I woke up at 6:30 to watch us pull into port. I was not ready to be in a new port already, I felt like we had just left South Africa! After taking some pictures I ate breakfast and got ready for our diplomatic briefing which was suppose to be at 8am. The briefing didn’t start until about 8:50 and I was on a city orientation trip that was supposed to leave at 9am! They ended up letting us off before the briefing was over so that we could make it to our trip. The place we were docked wasn’t really near anything, you have to take a water taxi to actually get to the waterfront where the shopping was. You could see the beautiful mountains from where we were though! We walked over to where the buses were that would take us on the city orientation. We drove for about twenty minutes to a town called Pamplemousses where there is a botanical garden. We walked around the garden and saw all the different types of plants and trees and a lot of birds too. Then we walked to an area where they had giant lily pads, which was really cool! Then we walked a little further to where they had some giant tortoises. They live to be over 300 years old. I was hoping they would be roaming out in the open but they were in a fenced in area. After this we got back on our bus and drove to a Hindu temple. It was so colorful and beautiful. All the different gods were carved into it and we got to walk inside, which required removing our shoes. 52% of the island is Hindu. From here we drove up to Fort Adelaide and we had a nice view of the city of Port Louis and could even see the M.V. Explorer. From this spot we could also see the Champ de Mars which is the oldest race track in the Indian Ocean region. After this we headed back to the ship.

By this time we were all starving so we just ate lunch on the ship. I ate with some people who had already taken the water taxi to the waterfront and found out you could pay $2 US dollars to go across which was a relief because I didn’t have any Mauritian rupees and there were no ATMs near the ship. So a group of us took the taxi after lunch and went to the ATM and walked around the waterfront. We all really wanted some ice cream because the island is so hot and humid, it’s almost unbearable! The place we ended up going had the biggest sundaes I have ever seen and they were delicious. A couple of the people I was with had to be back to ship for a trip so we all headed back. I relaxed in the nice cool ship for a while when I got back and then Megan and I decided to go to the waterfront to get dinner. She had been on a trip all day and needed the atm so I showed her where that was and then we ended up going back to the same place I had gotten the ice cream for dinner. We got a cheese pizza and it was so good! It was starting to get dark at this point so we hurried back to the ship because we didn’t feel very safe being two girls out at night.

Day 2:

I didn’t have any plans for this day so I woke up at 8 and went to breakfast on the ship and sat down with these two girls. One of them was planning on going to this market by herself but invited me to come so I went and was excited because I missed the market in South Africa and everyone that went got really cool stuff. So I got ready really quick and we took the water taxi to the waterfront because that’s where the bus station was. We asked around to find out how to get a bus to Vocoas which is were our interport lecturer from Mauritius told her the market was. This was my first time taking public transit in another country so I was kind of nervous, but it ended up working out and was way cheaper than taking a taxi. The day after we left Mauritius there was a holiday for the Hindus. For the week we were there all the Hindus were making a pilgrimage to a crater lake called Grand Bassin which they believe is filled with the same water as the Ganges River in India. I’m not sure on all the details, but I know it is in honor of the God Shiva and they get a bottle of water from the lake and bring it back to the temple where they are from. When they make the pilgrimage to this lake they build these big temples that they carry to the lake so we kept passing people carrying them on our bus rides and a lot of times got stuck behind them. Some of them were really big and extravagant. So we finally got to Vocoas after an hour and found out that it’s not where the market is! Luckily we found a woman that spoke English and she got us on the right bus back to the market which we had actually passed on the way to where we were. So anyways we got there eventually and it was so cool! I got a cute shirt for just over a dollar, we couldn’t believe how cheap it was! I also got some linen pants which are really lightweight and all the locals wear them. I’m pretty sure it’s what everyone wears in India too because it is going to be miserably hot! I also got a cool purse to carry around ports that’s big and zips and you wear it across your body so it’s more secure. We somehow ended up getting pizza again for lunch but it was still super good. We also tried some different fried things from the vendors and got fresh pineapple, bother were really good. We found the bus again and headed back to the waterfront and went to the McDonalds and got McFlurrys. Then we made one last stop to buy postcards and stamps and I also got a little wooden dodo bird. After this I just stayed on the ship for dinner and studied for a geology test that I had right after we left Mauritius.

Day 3:

I didn’t have any plans for this day really either so I slept in. Around noon I went to the waterfront with my roommate Andi and Amy because they hadn’t been yet and there was suppose to be a market nearby since it was a weekday. We asked someone where the market was and made our way over to it. This market wasn’t as big or as nice as the one as I had been to. We weren’t seeing anything we liked and it was way to hot so we didn’t stay to long. We stopped at a restaurant to get a drink because it was so hot. There is this soda called Appeltizer which taste like sparkling apple cider and comes from South Africa which I love so I got one of those. We stopped by an internet café after this but the internet was so slow that it wasn’t really worth trying. After this we just went back to the ship. Andi and Amy were staying in a villa, but Amy had a trip she had to go to and then was going to go back. When Amy went on her trip and Andi and I got ready and headed to the villa by ourselves. I would say nearly half the ship or maybe more got villas on Flic and Flac beach and decided to spend all their time there and call is “Spring Break”. It took us forever to get there because the traffic in Port Louis is horrible. It is really overpopulated and doesn’t look at all like the paradise I imagined, but once you get away from Port Louis it gets a lot nicer.

Once we were there we just hung out and waited for Amy and the other people that were on the semester at sea trip to get back. Around 7 or 8 a big group of us headed to a restaurant in walking distance for dinner. The owner of the complex and his wife actually ended up coming to dinner with us and suggesting the restaurant. There was live music which was really cool and I ended up getting a Chinese dish… chicken with pineapple and it was really good. There were about 15 of us so the whole dinner process took a really long time. When we finally got out of there we went to a place called Shots were all of the Semester at Sea kids at Flic and Flac were and they actually had a sign that said private party MV explorer which was pretty funny. We stayed there for a while and then headed back to the villa because Amy and I had a trip at 9am in the morning which meant we would have to get up really early to make it back in traffic. Once we were at the villa we decided we would just catch a cab back right then instead of waiting until the morning because there weren’t really enough beds for us all to sleep in. So we called a cab and it was there in 5 minutes and we actually made it back to the ship in about 25 minutes which was amazing! It was really late and raining and there were still pilgrims walking to the lake. I went straight to bed when we got back.

Day 4:

I got up and had breakfast before I had to be on my trip at 9. I met up with Amy and we headed to the buses. The trip was called Volcanic Island and we needed it for our geology class. We first headed to the Mahatma Gandhi Institute to listen to a lecture from a Mauritian specialist. Only the first 5 minutes of her lecture were about geology and the rest was all stuff that we had heard in global studies, so I was a little disappointed. Not to mention on the bus ride and the city orientation bus ride the guides gave us a history of the island, so I would say I’m pretty much an expert at this point. After about 30 minutes we got back on the bus to head to our next stop which was Trou Aux Cerfs, a dormant volcano. It was like a big crater with lots of trees. Unfortunately it was raining pretty hard when we got out so we couldn’t get great pictures and didn’t stay out for too long because we were dressed for the hot humid weather we had the previous three days.

After this we were headed to Grand Bassin where all the pilgrims were headed, so we were a little worried we wouldn’t be able to make it there. Luckily the road was open, but we had to park sort of far away and it was still raining. This wasn’t regular rain, the wind was blowing really hard, so the rain came straight at you and within 30 seconds you were completely soaked. There was a huge statue of Shiva, over 100 feet tall, that we could see from the bus and decided to walk to through the rain. There was a Hindi priest that was repeatedly singing a meditative chant and the only part I understood was “Shiva”. It was on speakers so that you could hear it everywhere. There was a large tent in front of the statue where people were gathered so we made our way in there to get out of the rain. After getting a closer look at the statue we headed back to the bus. We found out that the lake was only 5 minutes farther so we were kind of disappointed that we didn’t walk the 5 minutes to see it. Some of the students on our bus met some locals that fed them and gave them the t-shirts that all the pilgrims were wearing. At this point it was about 12:30 and we were really hungry. Everything was taking a lot longer then planned so we skipped the next leg of out trip and went straight to lunch which was a little over an hour away from where we were. I think most of the bus slept all the way there.

We pulled up to the restaurant and it was up on a mountain with a great view of the coast. Our meal started out with some bread and then everyone got this shell that was filled with some seafood thing, I think it was crab and cheese mostly. I don’t even like crab but I was so hungry that I actually ate it. Next we got a plate with chicken, salad and rice which was really good! Next was desert which was some sort of cooked banana with a scoop of ice cream which was also very good. The whole lunch process took an hour and a half and it was about 4 and we were at least an hour and half from Port Louis and our trip was suppose to get back at 5:30! We were still suppose to see a waterfall, the seven-colored earth and go to the beach. We decided to do everything but the beach and just make it back late, which was really disappointed because I hadn’t got to go to a beach yet and this meant I wouldn’t get to go to one at all.

First we went to the waterfall which was right around the corner. It was over 100 meters tall and was really beautiful, much more than I was expecting. We quickly took our pictures and got back on the bus for our next stop which was also really close. The seven colored earth is a volcanic phenomena that left this plot of land with rich mineral oxides that give different colors to the soil, it was really cool. They also had some giant tortoises on the property that we got to see, but they looked really miserable in their little confined space. After this we got back on the bus and actually made it back in an hour when our guide was guessing it would take 2 with traffic. It was close to 7 and on ship time was 9 so I just stayed on the ship after and had a light dinner because I was so full from our late lunch.

Now we are on our way to India, and I feel excited and nervous and not prepared! I have heard that just about everyone will get sick there so that’s what I am worried about, but I am going to see the Taj Mahal which I could not be more excited about! The time difference will be 13 and a half hours ahead of my home town which I think is kind of funny. We have the Sea Olympics on the 8^th, so no class which will be nice. I will be doing the scavenger hunt! Go Med Sea!!! Hehe. After India my trip will be halfway over, I can’t believe it!

Also I would really really love it if you would send me mail to the ship. This link

http://www.semesteratsea.com/voyages/spring2008/sp2008_communicatewship.html

will tell you where to send it and by what date, and I promise to send a postcard back! Also it will help if you write my cabin number 3046 next to my name if you do send something. Also thank you for all the blog comments, I love reading them and I can actually access them without using internet minutes, unless they find out and decide to block that too!

The rest of my stay in South Africa

2008-02-26T21:44:00.000-08:00

So my last 5 days in South Africa were amazing, as with the first day, and so much happened it will be hard for me to share everything. Partly because so much happened and partly because I feel like I can’t put a lot of it into words, but here is my best attempt! Again sorry for any spelling/grammar errors.

Day 2:
Andi got back to the room at like 2:30am just in time to back from her safari that left at 3:15. So this woke me up and I decided to stay up because I was so afraid that I wouldn’t wake up in time for my safari. I got to the union around 4:30 and met up with my group. A lot of them had just gotten back from going out for the night and didn’t sleep. Al, the director of student life, was our trip leader and he handed out our passports. We didn’t have stamps form South Africa and we were all really disappointed. Al told us there would probably be a lot of countries that we wouldn’t get stamps from. We waited for everyone to get there but one girl never showed up so we left without her. The ship gave us a boxed lunch to take and we got on out bus. We wouldn’t be able to take the food with us on the plane so we decided to eat our lunches at 5am. It was only about a 20 minute ride to the airport. Al ended up taking back our passports before we got there.
When we got to the airport Al and our tour guide checked us all in while we waited. Our plane left at 6:30 and I don’t think we got our boarding passes until 6:10 and then had to go through security. Security at the airport was a joke. We never showed ID when we went through and people got through with a lot more than 3 oz of liquid and some people even beeped in the metal detector and weren’t searched. We got to our terminal and I thought we would walk onto our plane, but we actually walk out get on a bus and it takes us to our plane and we walk up stairs to board it. I fell asleep as soon as I sat down and when I woke up they were serving us a hot breakfast! I have never had a hot meal on a plane so I was pretty impressed. They had omelets, yogurt, a rusk and whatever drink you wanted. It was only a 2 hour flight to Durban. I ate my food and went back to sleep and before I knew it we were landing.
We got off the plane and got on another bus and were provided with another box lunch. We were told the bus ride would be three hours and the lunch was just a snack because another lunch would be ready at the lodge when we got there! I ate a little bit of it while our tour guide Irka talked about Durban. After this I fell asleep again and woke up when we stopped for a bathroom break at a gas station. It was actually raining at this point. We still had 2 more hours to go so I slept some more and woke up about 30 minutes before we got there and just stared out the window still not believing where I was.
When we arrived we were handed a class of fresh juice and shortly after lunch was served and it was delicious. There was a monkey that came up and sat on the railing right where we were eating and we also saw some impalas. After that I headed to my room to relax until our evening game drive at 4. There were 11 of us that had room in the safari lodge which was a 5-10 minute walk away, but we got a ride over since we had all our bags. My roommates name was Kendal and she’s from Newport Beach so we just talked until it was time to go. Our room was really nice, there were two beds and a couch type thing right at the window so you could sit and stare out. There was a fridge and a microwave and a really big bathroom. It was a round villa type building with a thatch roof. There was also a really nice pool next to our room and warthogs and impalas roaming around. We decided to walk to the other lodge instead of waiting for a car to pick us up.
We all got into safari cars and went on a drive around the small reserve that the lodge was on. They didn’t have things like lion or elephants, but they had just introduced leopards and hyenas. We saw some zebras, a wildebeest, and a lot of impalas. We stopped and met the other groups to drink some water and have dried fruit and jerky. After this I got in the same car as Kendal because she said her driver Anna was really cool and had a lot of stories. We saw more or the same animals as we made it back to the lodge. We went back to our rooms and showered before dinner. Dinner was really good and we hung out for a while and talked with everyone. After that it was a little after 8 and we were ready to go to bed.

Day 3:

We had a wake up call at 7 to make it to breakfast by 8. They had the best fruit for breakfast, especially the pineapple. One student who got a ride from our lodge was talking to the driver and he said one of the other drivers got bit by a Mozambique spitting cobra the night before and might lose her thumb. We wondered if it was Ana because we hadn’t seen here and when we got in the car at 9 to go on our drive she wasn’t there. We decided to go with François and we asked about Ana and found out that it was her. He told us that he got bit by the same snake a month earlier while he was sleeping and had to spend a week and a half in the hospital and get 3 surgeries.
We left the lodge and drove for about 15 minutes to the reserve. The reserve was 98000 acres and had all of the big 5 which are lions, elephants, rhino, leopards, and buffalo. Our goal was to see all 5! Within 5 minutes of pulling into the reserve we saw our first of the 5… a bunch of buffalo! We took plenty of pictures and then just up the road were some zebras that we checked out. And after that were some giraffes. We also saw a lot of birds that Francois told us about and some bugs too. We stopped at a picnic area for a bathroom area where there was a zebra and her baby that everyone was taking pictures with until someone saw the elephants that were down the embankment in a riverbed! There were 60 of them and they were part of a herd of 120. Our driver told us to be ready to run if he said so in case they came our way because according to him we were about as close as you would want to be to a herd of elephants. We ended up being safe. As we walked back I saw a dung beetle rolling a ball of dung across the grass, which I thought was pretty funny.
After we left was saw some more buffalo and different birds. There were families that were driving there cars through the reserve as well and we thought it was hilarious that we saw a jaguar! I even took a picture of it hehe. I was surprised at the really nice cars people were driving a round, and Francois told us a story about how he came face to face with an elephant and threw it in reverse and packed right into a guy in a Porsche behind him! We came across some more giraffes and zebras. We headed up a mountain and got a beautiful view of the river and rest of the reserve. He told us about some of the trees and some people tried one of the fruits off a tree which are an elephant’s favorite snack. After this he pointed out the biggest spider I have ever seen. I think it was called an orb weaver or something like that. Its web is so strong they use to use it to make bullet proof vests. After the snake story and seeing that spider I was officially freaked out!
We started making our way back to the picnic grounds for lunch and we came across a huge group of baboons crossing the street. We got really close tot hem, it was so cool! I thought they were going to hop into our car. The little babies were so cute. Just as we thought we weren’t gonna see anything else before lunch we pull up right next to a rhino, the 3rd of the big 5! Then we keep driving and see another rhino in the distance and we think it might be heading to a water hole that was right by the road so we pull up next to it and wait. About a minute later out came the rhino and its little baby! Each time we would see something like this it would just put the biggest smile on my face. To see these animals in their natural habitat not locked up in some cage is so amazing. If you ever have the chance to come to South Africa you absolutely have to go on a safari. We spotted some warthogs after this and then arrived for lunch.
Lunch was so much better than I would have guessed! They actually put out tablecloths and silverware and had all sorts of food. We hung out and ate and were ready to go and find the last 2 of the big 5! We came up to this point that overlooked the river and we saw an elephant and two rhino. We saw another car at a spot closer to them and decided to head down there. We were getting picture of the three of the together when François said he saw a lion way up the river!!! In one picture we had three of the big 5, I couldn’t imagine it getting much better than that. The lion was walking up the river and getting closer and closer. François told us it wouldn’t do anything to the rhinos and he was right, it just kept walking by. It was female lion so she didn’t have the cool mane, but it was still amazing. Once she was out of site we decided to head back to our spot higher up and try to spot her again. We saw her for a second but then she went back into the bush were she couldn’t be seen. After this we made our way back to the lodge seeing a few more animals that we had already seen.
We got back to our rooms and showered and rested before dinner. They originally told us we were going have a bush dinner where I thought we would get to try different animals, but we just had that same type of dinner as the night before except it was at our lodge this time. Again the food was amazing. We were exhausted form the day so Kendal and I headed back to our room. When we got there at about 9 it was too hot to fall asleep so we ended up staying up till 130 talking. I think part of it had to do with being scared of snakes and spiders coming into our room while we were sleeping. We actually slept with the light on.

Day 4:

Wake up call was at 6 am with breakfast at 7. We filled up with as much fruit as possible before we had to leave at 8. When it came time to get on the bus we were all so sad to go. On the way to the air port we stopped at a craft market which was really cool but we only had about 20 minutes. It was really hard to make a decision in such a short amount of time because there was so much stuff, but I ended up with two really cool carved wood boxes and some bracelets. We made one more stop and a gas station and got snacks and eventually made it to the airport. We had some time before our flight left so we got some pizza which was really good. On the plane we had another hot meal this time it was pasta which was really good. We flew British Airways and I guess it must just be something they do on every flight.
Once we got back to the ship Kendal, Amanda and I went to the mall to do a little shopping. We bought yoga mats because the ones on the ship always get taken. There are yoga and pilates classes offered daily on the ship, which is a nice way to stay in shape. We decided to get sushi for dinner and it was so good! I’ve really missed having sushi an dI can’t wait to get to Japan and try it there. We walked back to the ship and all loaded our pictures onto our computers and shared them in Kendal’s room. Kendal’s came out a lot better because her camera could zoom a lot more, so she let me upload all of hers. She got some great shots of the lion. I went back to my room and unpacked and waited for my friend to call me because we were planning on shark diving the next day. She called around midnight and said we had to leave at 4 am. I was not thrilled about this because I hadn’t got much sleep the night before but I knew I would only be here once so I set my alarm for 330 and went to bed.

Day 5:

I got up at 3:30 and packed for the trip. We walked to the clock tower where we were getting picked up. We ended up having to pick up a couple other people which took 30 minutes and once they were all in we had a two hour drive to the spot. We were packed into the van really tight so I wasn’t able to get the sleep I was planning on. When we got there they had breakfast ready for us and talked a little about their company. They started out in 1989 as a research company and eventually began doing the cage diving to fund their research. There are only 8 companies total with one boat each that are aloud to do the cage diving.
By 8 we were getting on the boat and we only had to go out about 10 to 15 minutes to get where we needed to be to see the sharks. They did a circle and put the chum in the water and then they dropped the anchor. They put the cage in the water and explained to us how it would work and a little about the sharks. They told us that it is possible that the great whites could be extinct in 10 to 15 years because a lot of them are being killed for their jaws, which are mostly sold in the US. They put some fish heads on a rope right in front of the cage to lure the shark. To my surprise at this point I was feeling really sea sick so I sat at the front of the boat and sucked on a lollipop which is suppose to help and for the most part it did.
After sitting for about 45 minutes someone yelled that a shark was coming so we ran to the back and saw the huge great white swim by, it was so cool to see! After this happened four people already in wet suits got in the cage, but the shark didn’t come back. We sat for a long while with no sharks and then decided to move over by another boat that had a shark. Shortly after we got there we saw the shark and more people got in the cage. When the shark was approaching they would tell the ones in the cage to go down. They only had masks on so you stayed under as long as you could hold your breath. A lot of times they didn’t even see the shark because the visibility was so poor in the water. The shark didn’t come by for a while so they got out of the cage and right after he swam by 3 times! So they got back in and finally got a good look at it. I never got in because I wasn’t feeling well at all, but looking back I wish I did. The cage was a lot smaller than I imagined and at the time I was feeling like I would get really claustrophobic in there. February is actually the off season for the sharks so we were lucky to see as much as we did.
Around noon we headed back to the dock. I drank some hot chocolate, which was amazing, but didn’t feel up to eating the scones they made for us. We got to watch video clips from our trip and had the opportunity to buy the video, but I didn’t get a copy. After this is was time to head back to Cape Town. The ride seemed to take forever. There was a little boy and his father on the trip and he came up to my seat which was more towards the front and handed me a piece of trash and asked me to throw it out the window for him. I told him I didn’t want to litter and I would put it in my bag. I had some stickers with me that I had in case I ran into any kids and decided to offer some to him. He picked out the dinosaur stickers and went back to his seat. A minute later he came up and asked if he could have more so he could sell them. I was a little shocked but gave him a couple more. He saw that I had more and demanded that I give them all to him. I told him that I was saving them for other little boys. I asked him how old he was and he said 6. He also told me he could sell them for one rand, and there are 7 rand to the dollar. After I refused to give him the rest he sat back down for the rest of the drive.
As soon as we got back to the ship I laid down and went to sleep without changing or anything. I woke up two hours later to go to dinner with Sarah and Katie, who I had gone shark diving with, and some of their friends. We went to this jazz restaurant called the Green Dolphin. A live band played and they were really good! I ordered Calamari as an appetizer and then wanted raviolis for dinner but they were out so I got phyllo parcels. I wasn’t sure what they were but the description sounded good and they turned out to be amazing! It was a breaded pocket stuffed with butternut and some other things I can’t remember. For dessert I got a chocolate truffle tort that was also amazing and in the end I got all the food and entertainment for about $40 US and I imagine it would cost five times more back home. We didn’t get out of there until almost 11 so I just headed back to the ship for bed.

Day 6:

I woke up because several people kept calling Andi because she was suppose to hike Table Mountain with them, but she had decided she didn’t want to go anymore. Finally they convinced her to go and since I was now awake I decided to tag along, but we only had about three minutes to get ready. I got dressed grabbed the $50 rand that I had left and my camera and we left. I didn’t grab water or sunscreen and I wasn’t sure how we would manage, but I could imagine coming to Cape Town without going to the top of Table Mountain. We caught a taxi just outside of the ship and they took us to the base of the mountain where the cable car was. I thought we could get water there but everyone was all ready to start the hike that moment. Andi and I took one look up at the mountain and thought, there is no way. So we stayed behind and decided to use Andi’s credit card to take the cable car up. The only problem was the huge line!
After waiting for about two hours it was finally our turn to get in the car! It was really neat because the floor rotated so that you could get all the different views. The car actually made it up in 2-3 minutes, which felt really fast. The view was spectacular from the top! We headed to the restaurant for lunch since we didn’t have time to eat anything before we came. The food wasn’t that great, but it didn’t matter because we were on the top of Table Mountain! After we ate we walked around looking at the different views and then decided to try and find the group we had came with that decided to hike. We found them with cold water in hand and they looked so happy to see us/the water. I couldn’t imagine doing that hike, one it gets to a certain point it looks like the mountain goes straight up. We showed them to the restaurant and sat with them as they ate. They had met a woman from Brazil as they were hiking and she ended up buying our group a really nice bottle of champagne. We talked to some other people at the top as well. I noticed that a lot of people want to know about our political views when they find out we are from the US.
We walked around the top and took some more pictures and then decided to make our way down. Those who hiked decided to take the cable car down with us. Just as we were about to get on, we saw these two people standing on the side of the mountain. We couldn’t figure out what they were doing at first, but then we realized they were going to base jump! It was a man and a woman and as they finished getting ready they gave each other a tight hug and a kiss and the guy moved to the place that he would be jumping from. I still couldn’t believe he was seriously about to jump off the side of this mountain but he did and miraculously got his parachute open just in time. After seeing he was okay the woman got set up for her jump and off she went! She also got her chute open in time, but I was seriously scarred for both of their lives. They actually ended up landing in the street below and traffic had to stop for them. After this we got in the car with no wait, which was really nice. We piled into another taxi and made it back to the ship.
At this point I decided to take the time to write my post cards because I knew I had to finish them before on ship time at 9. When this was done I dropped them in the box and went back to the mall to do some last minute shopping. I came back to the ship with all my stuff and found Megan so I decided to go back out with her. We shopped a little more and then got dinner at this Mexican place right by the ship that I had been wanting to since I got there. I was really craving some enchiladas but they weren’t on the menu, so I went for nachos. They were so good! I had some extra rand so I got a chocolate milkshake too. It took a long time to get our food and by the time we were done it was almost on ship time. I ran to a bookstore real quick to spend my last rand on a magazine and then got back on the ship.
As another incentive to get people back on time there was a choir performance by a local high school. I made it back just in time for this. They were AMAZING! I got some videos of a couple of their songs, I wish I could share them now. We did not want them to stop but after an hour they had to go. I went back to my room took some Dramamine and went to bed. I was awaken by an announcement that the ship had been issued a fog warning and could not leave at this time. We were suppose to leave at 11pm. They said this meant we could be stuck for a few minutes, hours, or maybe till the next day.

The next morning..

I woke up and didn’t feel the ship rocking and looked out the window and we were still in South Africa! I couldn’t see Table Mountain this time though because the fog was so thick. So I went up and ate breakfast and it was so frustrating to be sitting right out side my new favorite place and not be able to leave the ship! I think we ended up leaving the harbor around 11am. The seas have been pretty rocky since then, but I imagined them being worse.
So now we are on our way to Mauritius! And I will be a full 12 hours ahead of California time, such a strange feeling. So hopefully a new update after we leave there on the 4th.

I love South Africa

2008-02-19T12:20:00.000-08:00

On the way to South Africa:

We had Neptune’s day on Valentine’s Day and the crew marched through the halls playing drums and yelling “wake up” around 7 am. Then around 8 they made an announcement that everyone had to come to the top deck and when I got up there people were taking turns getting this blue liquid poured on them which was suppose to be fish guts, and it smelled horrible! After that you jump in the pool and when you climb out you have to kiss these two big slimy fish and then kneel before King Neptune, who is actually our executive dean, and kiss his ring. After that was done they started shaving heads, and surprisingly about 15 girls did it, but I was not one of them! This day also happened to have roughest seas so far on the voyage, so that made a little more interesting. And for lunch we got hamburgers and hot dogs that we didn’t have to pay for… probably the best part!

Two days before we had our first global studies exam but it took us a really long time to get our grades back. Everyone did really badly for the most part, but I got a 90% so I’m really happy with that. It seemed like the average was in the 60s. I think a lot of people don’t even show up to the class, but I actually really enjoy it. Then the last B day before South Africa I had my first Finance test, but I have no idea how I did… I won’t find out till we’re back at sea.

I ended up getting bumped off my operation hunger trip that I was super excited for because they changed the day to a day that I would be on my safari. On the bright side, they ended up having extra room on the habitat for humanity house, so I will be helping to build a house the first day I get there!

South Africa Day 1:

I woke up at 5:30 am to watch the ship pull into port and see the sunrise, as I plan to do for every port. I went up to the seventh deck and it was still dark outside, but I could see Table Mountain!! It was so beautiful, I can’t even describe. I was so excited to be in South Africa, it is the port I was most looking forward to. I just stood along the railing and starred out at the mountain. Soon it started getting light outside and I could really see everything and I took a lot of pictures. We didn’t have a good view of the sunrise but it was still really beautiful. Once the sun was up I went and got ready and then had breakfast with Megan and then got all my stuff ready for my habitat for humanity trip!!

At 8am we had a diplomatic briefing. There were three speakers from the US government that worked in South Africa. The meeting was actually on time and got done early and the ship was cleared right after, I was shocked! It was 8:45 and my trip left at 9 so I headed to the class where we were meeting. A lady told us a little about the program and then we headed off the ship. We got to bypass the long line which was really nice! It was so good to step on land again and the fact that the land was in Africa made it 1000 times better. We split into two groups of 15 and got on these small buses. As we were driving we first saw the big mall and all the shops that were right by the port, but as soon as we got a little farther out we saw the townships. They were full of shacks made out of whatever material the people could find. It was such a huge contrast.

In about 30 minutes we were at the township we would be building our house at. We got of the buss and walked into this fenced area where we were told a little bit about what we were going to be doing for the day and then we got back in our buses and drove to the house. Each bus had a different house. We got out and made a big huddle and were introduced to the homeowner and the other guys we would be working with. The woman we were building the house for was living in a shack in this township for the last 15 years. It was right next to the house we were going to build, and I cannot imagine how someone could live there and raise their children there. We ended with a chant and then got to work.

The house already had the first layer of bricks started by the guys before we got there. The first thing I helped with was mixing the cement. One part cement 3 parts sand and water! We mixed it on the foundation in the middle of the house and it was a lot of work. After doing that for a while we made a brick line to move bricks from the front of the house to the inside were we would be working. Next three girls and I were called over to help oil the doorframes and window frames. This is done to help keep them from leaking. Once we were done with that it was tea time! The homeowners provided us with tea and this fried bread with jelly in the middle that was really good. After this I went and helped more with cement, which I think they called duggert or something that sounded like that, and moving blocks.

Before I knew it it was lunch time! They brought us all out a plate with chicken rice and vegetable, which was so so good! I could have ate 3 more plates I think hehe. After this we went back to the house and filled in any holes in the cement and used sponges to get the extra off and smooth it out. There was also more mixing and brick moving. They began putting in the window and door frames and by the end of the day we had the first 8 levels of brick done. Towards the end of the day all the kids were getting out of school so we went and played with them. I can’t even describe how cute they are. I forgot my stickers to give to them, I’m so mad!! Some people had stuff to give them though and they loved it. We even got them to sing the national anthem because we had learned a little bit of it on the ship. I got a video of it, it was so cute! We had a tire that we rolled back and for with them and they loved to have their picture taken, especially when you show it to them on the screen after. It was so funny… this one guy was taking a picture of them and he wanted them to count to three and then he would take the picture, but they didn’t understand and just kept counting all the way to fifty. We were having so much fun but the project leaders called us over because it was time to clean up.

We started cleaning but then one guy called the girls over because he wanted to drive us to see what a finished house looked like. So we all piled into the bed of his pick up and drove over to another house. The streets were filled with kids that had just gotten out of school and they all waved to us. Something I found interesting was even though many of them lived in these shacks they still dressed really nice in uniforms for school. We got to see a lot more of the township as we drove to the other house. There were shacks that had signs that they were hair salons or kitchens. We got to the house and it looked really good. This lady also had the old shack that she used to live in right next door. I got a good picture of the two houses side by side. The shack is now actually used as a garage.

We headed back to our site and by that time the clean up was done. We got in another huddle and we thanked them for the food and the opportunity and they thanked us for our hard work. We also asked some questions and I found out they build about 200 homes a year. The cost is around 10,000 is US dollars. The part that takes so long is getting it approved to be built. We ended again with another chant and got back on the bus to the ship. It was probably the best trip I have done so far on this voyage.

When I got back I took a little nap because it was a long day of hard work! I got up and Megan and I met up for dinner on the ship. They had steamed rice and thanks to Megan my new favorite thing is rice with butte rand sugar! You’re supposed to use cinnamon too but they don’t have any on the ship that I know of. After this we were ready for shopping! There is a mall right in front of the ship called the Waterfront. It was like being back in the US, they had all of our stores! It was even nicer then any of the malls I’ve been to back home. There was even a grocery store in this mall… it was huge. The first thing we did was find an ATM and take out some rand. Then we walked around but there weren’t many stores we wanted to go in because it was all stuff we could find back home. We ended up buying some overpriced post cards and then Megan found a flag that she wanted and I found a cool t shirt! Next it was time for smoothies. Yum! Then we decided to hit the grocery store restock on snacks because the last 9 days at sea without snacks was really hard. I found these mango wafers which ended up being really good! I spent like 180 rand which I think is really only like 20 dollars. I think it was a pretty good deal. We carried all our stuff back to the ship and I began packing for my safari. I think I got everything squeezed into my little backpack. I leave at 4:45 tomorrow morning… I can’t wait! Now I’ve just been typing my blog and I’m hoping I will be able to post it and go to bed. I am now 10 hours ahead of the time at home, so weird. Anyways I miss everyone soooo much!! I will have more once we leave.

My 5 days in Salvador Brazil!!

2008-02-10T03:36:00.000-08:00

Bom dia!!That's Portuguese for good morning :)
This is my update for all 5 days in Brazil, so I know it’s a little long… maybe read it in pieces.

Brazil
Day 1:
I set my alarm for 5:45 so that I could be up in time to watch the ship dock, but I actually woke up at 5:20 and couldn’t sleep because I was so excited so I grabbed my camera and headed up to the 7th deck. There were already a lot of students up there surprisingly. The sun was just rising so I pulled out my camera and took a bunch of pictures. The ship was docked by 6 am and breakfast didn’t start until 6:30, so I found Megan and we just hung out on the deck until then. By the time it was 6:30 there was the longest line I have ever seen for breakfast! So we got in line and ate outside. After breakfast I went back to my room and got dressed. We had a meeting at 8am that we had to go to before we could get off the ship. The meeting consisted of some last minute safety tips and stuff like that. After the meeting we headed back to our rooms to get everything ready to see Brazil! I left my camera and strapped on my money belt because of all the warnings we had been given. I also put some money in my shoe just in case! I even took off all my earrings. We didn’t get cleared to get off the ship until around 10.
I met up with Megan, Kate, Shane, Robin and another Kate to explore Brazil. We got off the ship at around 11 and as we walked off the ship there were these two ladies dressed up in these big dresses that tied ribbons around our wrists. You are suppose to make a wish and when the ribbon falls off your wish will come true. I got a green one! A speaker on the ship said the first one he had took two years to fall off! There were five or six other cruise ships getting there that day so the dock was full of people. One other cruise ship had a whole band playing music for them as they got off. We walked through the terminal and exchanged a little more money. As we walked out we were bombarded with people trying to sell things. After we got through that we followed a path that was on a map we got from the ship. It took us to the lacerda elevator which takes you to the top part of the city. You usually have to pay five cents but it was free that day because of carnival. They pack as many people in as possible and there is a person who sits in there to push the buttons. I was definitely feeling claustrophobic while I was in there, but we made it out ok.
Once we were at the top we were all pretty hungry so we decided to try to find a place to eat. It took us a while to agree on something but we eventually fount a nice restaurant on the second floor of one of the buildings. Ordering was really hard without knowing Portuguese but we eventually got what we wanted. I ordered chicken with rice and beans, and it was really good. The rice and beans were amazing. After that I got some fresh mango juice which was kind of like a smoothie. It was soo good, way better than anything from Jamba Juice! I tried some of the fried cheese balls someone else got and they were really good too. After we left we shopped around a bit. We bought some post cards and decided we would wait another day before deciding what else we wanted to get. I didn’t feel that Brazil was as scary as I thought it would be. Shane brought his camera and it was fine. We eventually decided to head back to the ship so that we could rest up for Carnival that night. By the time I got back I was so tired, I set my alarm and took a nap.
I got up and met with Megan and Robin in Megan’s room to get ready for Carnival. We had all signed up for the semester at sea program “traditional Carnival: more mellow, but just as fun”. We didn’t have costumes or face paint so we did that best that we could with the make-up that we had… it was pretty funny. We headed down to the dock to meet up with the group and a lot of other people weren’t dressed up so we didn’t feel too bad. There seemed to be about 100 of us there. We walked up to Pelourinho, which was where we went earlier in the day except they lead us up some side roads instead of the elevator. Pelourinho is the name of a post where they use to whip slaves. We had a bunch of security guards surrounding us as we walked up. They showed us around a bit and explained what was going on. We went to the front of a church and they told us that we would meet up there later when it was time to go. Then they lead us to a restaurant were we got some water and they set us free for two hours until we had to meet back at the church.
Megan and I were really hungry but the restaurant we were at was too expensive so we decided to go this cheap hamburger place we had saw earlier. We met one other girl that went with us. It was a little scary by our selves. Nobody tried to kiss us but one guy did grab my hand very firmly and shake it. We made it to the place and we got a cheeseburger and Guarana, which is the main soda of Brazil. It’s made from a really energizing fruit, and I thought it was really good! The cheeseburgers were okay, after all it was only 5 reals for the whole meal which is like $3 usd. Right in front of where we ate there was a samba stage were different groups would perform on and when they were done they would continue marching through the streets. After we were done we headed back to the restaurant we were at originally to meet back with some people who decided to eat there, but they were already gone. We decided to just head back to the church a little early, but right as we tried to walk out a couple samba groups were coming down the narrow street so we just stood to the side and watched. There costumes were really cool and they were followed by brass bands and drums. One guy had this huge dress on with feathers on the back and it was all lit up and it was so heavy he had people hold it up for him when he needed a break and they gave him water. On top of that he was wearing high heeled boots, I have no idea how he was doing it! After they went through we got back up to the church and watched the samba stage. This one group had a bunch of guys and girls dressed in not much more then thongs and a couple feathers and they were covered head to toe in silver body paint.
At 9:30 we headed to the elevator to get back to the ship. Our group had gotten a lot smaller because a lot of people decided to stay longer. Semester at sea had set up for a shuttle to take semester at sea students from the elevator to the ship, which was really nice. As soon as I got back I took a shower and sent some emails and then went to bed.
Day 2:
Megan and I signed up for a semester at sea trip to Itaparica Island which left at 8 am so we got up early and went to breakfast on the ship. We went back to our rooms and grabbed our stuff, and this time we had our cameras! We headed out to the dock to meet with the trip. From there the group walked to the harbor where we boarded a boat to the islands. We were first headed to a smaller island. On the way there they served us fresh fruit. I had the mango and it was amazing! It took us about an hour and a half to get to the first island called Ilha dos Frades. I posted some pictures of it previously. Only 20 families actually live there. We had a little over two hours of free time here. First Megan and I walked up this hill to the remains of an old church. The roof had fallen in and it was covered in graffiti. Inside you could see a grave stone for someone buried in 1931 and out behind the church there was a graveyard but none of the graves were marked with names or dates. One had fresh flowers on it, so it seemed some of them were recent.
After being up there for about 15 minutes we were so hot we had to go down to the beach and get in the water! The water was so warm it barely even cooled us down, but it was still really nice. The water was really clear and you could see little fish swimming around your feet. After swimming around to a while we were going to get out but we saw a sea slug that had washed up on the shore. Megan knew what it was because she worked on a beach where they use to wash up a lot, but this one was black with green circles on it. She picked it up and carried it further out into the ocean. After this we got out and dried off. We ordered some fresh juice, I got mango again! This time it was actually juice and not like a smoothie. We sat for a while and then headed back to the boat. Once everyone was on we were on out way to Itaprica Island where we would have lunch! We were so hungry already.
The boat ride was about 45 minutes and when we got there lunch was ready and waiting for us. It was a buffet at this restaurant that was right on the water. There were all kinds of things and I tried pretty much all of it. I had some sort of potato salad, rice and beans, spaghetti, some type of lasagna, meat balls, chicken, and beef. My plate was as full as possible and I ate it all, it was really good. I think the rice and beans was probably my favorite part. After eating we decided to try to walk around but there wasn’t much to see where we were. We sat down at another place and tried to get chocolate ice cream and ended up with coffee flavored, but it was still really good. We got back on the boat and headed back to Salvador, which took another hour and a half. We were all really tired and a lot of people slept on the way back.
We got back to the ship a little after five and went straight to the shower. I relaxed for a while after and then got dinner even though I wasn’t that hungry because if you miss the dinner time you can’t eat until breakfast. After dinner Megan and I sat in the piano lounge and wrote post cards. The rest of the night I just relaxed and started a little bit of this blog.
Day 3:
I slept in till 9:30 which was really nice! Breakfast was no longer being served so I had a granola bar for breakfast and then met up with Megan, Robin, Kate and Tracy. We headed to Pelourino again in hopes of finding an internet café, shopping and getting some lunch. We walked through the Mercado Modelo on the way there, which is a big shopping center in front of the elevator. We looked at a lot of different things but didn’t buy any. Next we headed up the elevator. We shopped around for a while and then found this guy who was painting tiles with his hands and they were really beautiful. Robin wanted to wait for him to make one for her, but the rest of us were really hungry so we left Robin and Kate there and searched for a place to get lunch. It took us a while to find a place but we finally did. It was kind of expensive so I decided to get two appetizers… those cheese balls I tried the first day and French fries! Hehe.. The cheese balls weren’t nearly as good as the first ones I tried, but it was food! And definitely better than food on the ship. Lunch took a lot longer then expected so when we went back and looked for Robin and Kate they were gone. We decided we would look for an internet café. We finally came to one and Kate and Robin happened to already be there. All the computers were full so we had to wait a while but we eventually got on, I was so excited! That’s when I was able to post those pictures.
Megan and I were done, but Tracy was still on so I decided I wanted to try Acai. Javier was our interport lecturer on the ship and one night he talked about food to try in Brazil and this was on the list. I saw other people eating it in the café and it looked really good. Acai is an energizing berry and they blend it up with ice or something to make it really cold, kind of like a smoothie but it’s served in a bowl and you get banana or other fruit on top of it and they also give you granola to put on top if you want. I ordered mine with banana and Megan ordered hers with pineapple, and this is probably my favorite thing that I have had in Brazil so far! I hope I can find it when I get back home. After this we headed back to the ship to get ready for the soccer game!
The day before we arrived in Brazil we had a preport meeting and they announced that Dean Gaither had arranged for a semester at sea trip to a soccer game at the last minute and there were 200 tickets available. As soon as Andi and I heard that we ran to the field office to get in line to buy them even though we were suppose to stay for the meeting. We ended up being like 20th in line. After we had got ours it was like a mad house! Everyone was pushing and shoving, I’m so glad we raced there right away. Then once we were in Brazil they announced they had more tickets and there should be enough for everyone to buy.
So back to Thursday, we got back to the ship and started to get ready. We went to dinner at 5:30 on the ship and there was a huge line because basically everyone who was on the ship was going to the game and wanted to eat first. We ate our food and then finished getting ready. At 6:30 we were down at the dock ready to go. There ended up being eight buses of us, that’s over 300 people! It seemed to take forever to get on the buses, but we finally did. It was about an hour drive to the stadium. It was nice to get a view of more than just the port for a change, but it was night so we couldn’t see too much. A lot of students dressed up in jerseys for the Brazil team, but the funny thing was the game was actually between Bahia and Pocoes. A couple people had the right jerseys though.
We pulled up to the stadium and it was about the size of a high school football field. There were stands only on one side of the field. We looked so funny pulling up in our huge eight buses.. I don’t think the Brazilians knew what was going on. We packed into the stands just as the game started. I tried to take some pictures but they weren’t coming out because of the lighting. There was this little boy sitting in front of us who looked to be about seven or eight and he was really into the game, it was so cute. There were vendors walking around with different snacks like popcorn with coconut on top, this sugar cane that you would suck on, and this guy with a huge canister of ice cream that he would carry on his shoulder. Megan, Andi, and I decided to try the ice cream. It was a mix on chocolate, lemon and coconut in the canister and it was pretty good. Luckily we didn’t get sick or anything. There were military looking police that stood around the field and some of them even had German shepherds. Then at half time they all ran out onto the field to escort the referees off the field, which I thought was pretty interesting. I took a picture of this, hopefully it came out okay, I haven’t checked. At one point these two younger boys that were selling stuff stood in front of me and made hand signals that they wanted me to take a picture of them, so I did and they seemed so excited. I had heard previous semester at sea people talk about this but I still was surprised. There was one group of people that were really into the game and there was a whole chant that they were singing. That only part I understood was when they would yell Bahia! Bahia! Bahia! In the end Bahia won 2 to 0! It was really cool to watch, I’m really glad we were able to go. We piled back into the buses and a lot of the Brazilian kids were waving to us from outside the buses and some of them came up to window and wanted their picture taken again. As the buses headed back I fell asleep and next thing I knew we were back at the ship. It was around midnight so I went straight up to my room to go to bed.
Day 4:
I slept in past breakfast again and had a granola bar for breakfast. It was the last remaining snack from the shopping I did in Puerto Rico. I really don’t like the ship food and had been surviving off my snacks, so I don’t know what I will do on the way to South Africa, but oh well. I called Megan and we decided our mission for the day was to get stamps for our post cards, do a little shopping, and get some more acai!! So we met up with Tracy and headed out. We found stamps right away so that was good. Then we walked around the upper city again and did some shopping. Megan was telling me about these flip flops called Havianas that they make in Brazil and actually sell back in the US, and she says they are the best flip flops she ever owned. So I decided that I had to get some. Apparently I’m not very good at bargaining because we went to like three different places that wouldn’t lower the price. I ended up getting a pair of blacks one with little Brazil flags on the strap. I also wanted a shirt, but I couldn’t find one that I liked.
We headed back to the internet café for our acai! We also order a pizza because we saw someone eating one yesterday and it looked amazing. I ordered my acai with mango this time and got a large. It was so amazing.. I’m really going to miss it. Our pizza came out after, which was also amazing, probably one of the best I ever had, or I’ve just been eating too much ship food lol. Then we tried to find the guy that was painting tiles again, but we had no luck. We actually found another guy doing it but he wasn’t nearly as good. So we headed back to the ship and looked in a few stores along the way, but nothing was really standing out to me. I wanted to buy something that I would know came from Brazil, but I just couldn’t find it. So we got back and I worked on some homework and sent some emails and then Megan and I got dinner. I had a trip leaving at eight the next morning so I just decided to stay in and do class work and watch some tv shows on my computer.
Day 5:
I got up at seven and got ready and went to breakfast. I ended up eating with one of the professors on the ship and he was telling me about what semester at sea was like when he went ten years ago, which I found really interesting. It’s so weird to live with your professors and see them everywhere. After breakfast I went back to my room and got my stuff ready for my trip, still not sure what to expect. It was called coastal environments near Salvador and it was for my geology class. We met in the Union first where a geologist gave a presentation of the costal environments. A lot of it we had already talked about in my geology class. After the presentation we headed off the ship and picked up boxed lunches on the way out. We learned that we were headed first to Praia do Forte where they have a marine turtle research and preservation project. We had an 80 kilometer drive which took quite a while. We made one quick stop at a little fishing port to take pictures and our guide explained to us about fishing in Salvador. The rest of the way there the guide and geologist explained other things as we would pass them. It was nice to drive out of Salvador during the day and get an idea what other parts of Brazil where like. Our whole time here I hadn’t seen a McDonalds and I was so shocked, but then we ended up seeing one on the way to Praia do Forte, and we also saw pizza hut!
We finally arrived and the first thing we did was walk to the beach where there was dead coral reef that we could walk way out on because it was low tide. The geologist explained that in the past 5000 years the sea level has actually dropped 4 to 5 meters which is what allowed this to happen. In the tide pools there were really pretty blue fish, I tried to get pictures of them but I won’t be able to post from the ship. There were also a bunch of cool little crabs. There were cutest kids out there and they caught a fish and wanted me to take a picture of them. I wish I could speak Portuguese! After this we went to see the turtles. There were all different ones in these little tanks, I felt so bad for them. We even saw little baby ones, they were so cute. The project helps protect the eggs that the turtles lay so that made me feel better, I just hate to see them in the little tanks. We sat down and ate our boxed lunches after this and just relaxed for thirty minutes until we had to meet up again because it is so hot and humid in Brazil! We walked back to the bus and had two more stops on the way home. The first one was at another beach to observe the mangroves; we were only there for about 15 minutes. Next we went to the ocean where there was an industrial outfall from a petroleum plant. It was so strange because right behind the ocean where it was dumped there was a river where a bunch of locals would come to BBQ and swim, and I don’t see how that can be healthy. One of the problems with the sewage outfall is that the currents carry it right into the all saints bay, which is where our ship is docked! I learned a lot more, but this is all I can think of right now.
When I got back to the dock I was so excited because they were having a so long Brazil BBQ to encourage people to come back on the ship early. So I get up there craving hamburgers and hot dogs and they didn’t have either! What kind of BBQ is that?! So I just ate the potato salad and macaroni salad and corn on the cob. The chicken and pork ribs didn’t look too appetizing to me. On the bright side they had vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup!! So I filled up on two servings of that hehe. Megan and I decided we would just have to go back and buy cheeseburgers later. So now I’m back in my room and the ship should be leaving in a few hours. I have a paper due on a church in Salvador tomorrow, my first global studies test on Tuesday and a finance test on Sunday! So all this work will hopefully make the nine days at sea on the way to South Africa go by faster. On Thursday we won’t have class because it’s Neptune’s day. This is supposed to be when we cross the equator which was last Saturday, but whatever should still be fun. The tradition is to shave your head and for those who don’t I think the ceremony involves getting fish guts poured on your head, kissing fish, and kissing Neptune. I’ll let you all know for sure when it happens on Valentines Day, what a way to celebrate haha.
So looking back on my five days here I had fun and saw a lot of neat things. I think it would be nice to see the other parts like Rio de Janeiro or Iguacu Falls, so maybe next time! I’m looking forward to hear stories from students who went to these places. I hope everyone makes it back on the ship tonight on time! Surprisingly in Puerto Rico everyone did. I’m a little worried about hitting rough seas on the way to South Africa, so we’ll see how that goes. I only start feeling sick in class for some reason. But anyways hope everyone is doing well back home, I miss you guys so much!

I´m in Brazil!

2008-02-07T10:20:00.001-08:00

We found a little internet cafe in town! I wanted to try and upload some pictures because the ship´s internet is too slow... I will have an actual update on everything I do in Brazil by the time I leave hopefully. We are going to a futbol game tonight, I can´t wait!

This is me crossing the equator!!

We passed this fort as we were pulling into port in Puerto Rico.

Here I am with Megan, Kate, and Shane at Castillo San Cristobal.
This is pulling into port in Brazil.

This is an island I went to yesterday, so pretty! Only 20 families actually live on it.

Here I am on the island!

The M.V. Explorer in front of two larger cruise ship in Salvador Brazil!

This was the view from the harbor when we got on the boat to go to the islands.

That´s all I have for now..

I'm finally able to post from the ship...YAY!

2008-01-31T11:51:00.001-08:00

I have been having trouble accessing the blog page so these are actually three blogs that I have typed since I have been on the ship… enjoy!
Also… Please do not email me any pictures, videos, or other large files because the internet is too slow to download them and it wastes a lot of my minutes. Thanks J
And please excuse any spelling errors, I haven’t had time to proof read…

1/24/08
So I’ve been on the ship since yesterday (Wednesday)!! I went down to the lobby of the hotel around 9:30 to get a taxi to the ship. There ended up being three other students from semester at sea there that needed to go to the ship so we all piled in together. The driver dropped us off right in front but there was a huge line, so we had to walk all the way to the end with our bags and it felt like we would be stuck there for hours. The sun came out full strength too, it was sooo hot! The line inched along and eventually started really moving. We handed over our bags and showed our passports and then we were able to walk around the building and see the ship! It was amazing!! There was another line where we handed over our passports and got our room keys. I’m in room 3046!!
Once we did that we got in a short line to walk onto the ship and have our carry on bags checked. We headed into the union, which is the largest room on the ship where we will have global studies everyday, and went to several stations to finish the check in process. After that was done I headed down to my room! I wasn’t able to meet my roommate yet, but I could see she had already been there. So I wondered around the ship for a while and met some different people and had lunch with them. The food was good, we had tacos! I found Megan when I was done eating and we explored the rest of the ship and kept checking to see if our bags had arrived at our rooms yet so that we could unpack. We ran into her roommate and her parents for the first time and then later when we went to her room they showed us how previous voyagers had signed the back of the picture in the room. It was interesting to see what they had wrote, but when I went back to check the picture in my room there was no signatures on it! At that time my bags were at my room so I was able to start unpacking. It was pretty tough because there aren’t many places to put things. Half way through my roommate showed up! Her name is Andy and she’s from Pennsylvania where she goes to Bucknell and majors in psychology. She’s really nice!
At 1530 (3:30 pm) we had our first lifeboat drill and we had to wear long pants, closed toe shoes, long sleeves, a hat, and of course our lifejacket. Luckily it had cooled off a little bit. The whole process took about 45 minutes. I took a short nap after because the whole day was exhausting. I had to wake up soon because the ship was leaving!! I stood at the back of the ship as we left. There were a lot of parents on the dock waving goodbye and it was so exciting. The ship had to do a 180 before leaving, which was pretty interesting. I stood out there for quite a while and then found Megan and we ate dinner with her roommate and some other students. We sat outside for a while after until 2000 (8:00 pm) when we had to go to a general orientation.
At the orientation we found out a lot about our community. We have the biggest group of students ever totaling 733! The total number of people on the ship is over 1000. The largest number of students comes from California followed by Colorado. There are 70% girls on the ship and 30% guys. This followed with some safety guidelines and such. The ship was really rocking at this point, more than I expected. You could see a lot of people weren’t feeling very well. When this was over we had to go to meetings with our “seas”. We are grouped into different seas based on where our cabins are. I am part of the Mediterranean Sea!! Later of in the voyage we will have sea olympics where we will have a number of different events and I think the winner decides if they want to be first or last off the ship in Miami. After this I went straight to bed.
I Woke up at 730 this morning and got ready for a day full of different orientations. Went to breakfast first and then our first orientation introduced us to the faculty and staff followed by an overview of the University of Virginia’s honor code. After that I came back to my room for a bit and typed the beginning of this blog and took a short nap. I went to lunch with Megan and Lauren (her roommate) and then walked around the deck for a while. Then I had to set up my shipboard account with a credit card so I can buy a sweatshirt tomorrow (they are close today). Now I am about to head upstairs to see if I can actually get online to post this, so I guess if your reading this that means this worked J. First day of classes are tomorrow!! I have Global Studies and Geology and then we’re on to Puerto Rico!

1/26/08
Friday was the first day of A day classes. Megan and I got up early to have breakfast and go the bookstore to buy SAS sweatshirts! I also bough a long sleeve shirt designed just for the spring 08 voyage that lists the countries we go to and has their flag. I had the classes global studies and geology. In global studies we learned a little bit about Latin America and Puerto Rico with a little information about the Bahamas. We listened to some music which was really cool. I had a couple hours until my next class so I went up the pool deck and laid out and listened to my ipod which was really nice! It’s so strange not to be working and going to school all day long and just being able to relax. I’m sure as we get more homework I will have less time for that but it’s definitely nice to have a break from work work. After dinner we had a pre port meeting for Puerto Rico where we just learned basic information that we would need to navigate the city. This is one of the safer ports so they did not have too much to say, which won’t be the case for our next stop in Brazil. It’s also nice that we can use US currency and use cell phones for our last calls home before the rest of the ports. After the meeting Megan and I decided to grab some mats and do an ab work out on the deck. It was such a nice night and just a little windy. After we decided to treat ourselves to a smoothie and they were soooooo good! It’s a little dangerous because you have to pay for them so I am going to try not to get another one for a while.
We woke up for an early breakfast at 7 am the next day so we could watch the ship pull into Puerto Rico. Just as we got up to the deck we were passing one of the forts and it was so beautiful! We took a lot of pictures and then finished eating our meals. We ran into Kate and Shane who we had met at dinner one night and decided we would walk to town together when we got off the ship. At around 8am they began calling people by ID numbers to go up to the faculty lounge for customs. There was a line starting from the stairs up to the 7th deck but it seemed to go by pretty fast. We got out passport showed it to the Puerto Rican officials and they ok’d us so we gave back our passports and got a yellow pass that allowed us off the ship. As we headed to the second deck to get off the ship there was a line starting from the stairs on the fourth deck and it probably took about 20 minutes to get off, but when we did it was so exciting and I was glad to step foot on solid ground. We decided we wanted to walk to the two forts and old town San Juan so we asked for the best way to get there and headed out. We walked down the streets taking pictures of different things and then we came up to the fort called Castillo San Cristobal. We paid five dollars to be able to go into each fort. We explored this one for about 20 minutes walking up to the different levels and reading different signs that explained what the different parts were used for. I took some awesome photographs I wish I could share but the internet here is just too slow! We then walked through old San Juan and found a place to eat lunch. We found a nice little place which I cannot remember the name of. We continued walking and found our way to the ocean. We walked along the wall to the second fort Castillo San Felipe del Morro. We thought there were eventually be a way up but we got to the end of the trail and realized we would have to go back and find another way. We were disappointed only because we were so hot! We ended up making our way there and it was really beautiful. After this I felt like we had walked forever so we decided to get a cab back to the ship. The walking had really worn me out so I decided to call it a night and just hang out and make some phone calls while I still could.
I woke up this morning around nine and Megan and I walked back to Old San Juan to mail out some post cards and try to find a place to buy snacks for our room on the ship. The walk seemed a lot longer then we remembered so we had to stop at the Starbucks we remembered seeing to get a nice mango frappaccino which first had in the Bahamas. It was just what I needed…so yummy J We then found a souvenir shop that sold stamps and luckily found the post office with drop boxes. We asked someone where the Walgreens was because we had seen other students had gotten stuff there. We found it and I stocked up on all sorts of candy, cookies, granola bars, cereal, and other snacks that would be good in between the hours the dining halls are open. We walked around some more trying to find a place for lunch. We found a café with a lot of people in it to we figured it had to be good. We sat down next to some fellow SASers and they said this place was amazing and it was their second or third time eating there. There was this sweetbread with melted butter inside that was sprinkled with powdered sugar that was AMAZING. I can’t remember the name unfortunately. We decided we didn’t want to walk back with our bags from Walgreens so we tried to get a cab, but the guy didn’t know where the M.V. Explorer was and we did not know the dock number so we ended up walking. It wasn’t too bad and we stopped right before the port at McDonalds and got a small ice cream. As we got back there were a lot of Puerto Rican students getting on the boat because they are having a sort of open house for them today. Next I went to the field program office where they have a list of trips people want to sell and I found two people that had the rainforest hike and beach trip for tomorrow that I decided I really want to go on. I left notes on their rooms and will hopefully hear back from them, otherwise I can go tomorrow morning to the bus and see if theirs room. If not I’m sure I’ll find something to do, and in about an hour I leave for my bio bay trip… I’m excited! So I’ll give another update when I leave Puerto Rico hopefully.

1/31/08
So I have already written two blog entries which have not yet made it to the web, so I am hoping after writing this one I will have more luck. Sunday night I went on my bioluminescent bay trip. We all got on a bus to head to the bay and on the way we stopped for a bathroom break and I had just enough time to get something from Taco Bell. It was strange driving through Puerto Rico and seeing so many places that we have back home. We were almost there but a car accident was blocking the road and after we got passed that there was still a lot of traffic. It probably took close to two hours to get off the bus. I sat next to a girl named Holly on the bus and we decided to be kayak partners. We all got off the bus and had a quick instruction about how to kayak. Then we strapped on out life jackets and paddled out and waited for the rest of the group. We entered at a little beach and then kayaked our way over to a little canal that lead to the bay. It was night time at this point and the only light source was a glow stick on the back of everyone’s kayak. We had to go through the channel one by one because it was so narrow. Holly and I seemed to have a little trouble going in a straight line, but only ran into a few trees. About half way down the channel we began to see our paddles light up a blue color as they struck the water, but I couldn’t look at it too much because I would end up running into a tree! So finally we got to the bay and my arms were so tired I wasn’t sure how I would make it back, but it didn’t matter because we made it to the bay!! We stuck our hands in the water and wiggled our figures which would make the water light up. I also dropped some water on my leg and little spots would light up blue, kind of like pieces of glitter. We got all our kayaks side by side and the guide explained why this happened. Then we spread out a little and put our feet in the water and starred up at the sky because the stars looked to beautiful. We weren’t aloud to swim in the water, but it was still awesome. Eventually it was time to paddle back and to my surprise it was really easy. This time we were going with the current, no wonder my arms were so tired on the way to the bay. We barely even had to paddle, so it was really nice. When we got out of our kayaks they gave us some water and Puerto Rican candy. Soon we were on our way back to the ship, which took about an hour and a half this time. I made a few phone calls home and then went to bed.
Monday morning I got up early because I wanted to try to get on the El Yunque rain forest hike and luquillo beach trip at the last minute. Luckily I was able to get a spot!! We got on smaller buses in groups of twenty and the bus driver told us about San Juan as we drove first to the rain forest. We drove up the mountain and were dropped off so that we could hike along La Mina trail. The trail was actually paved but very narrow so we had to walk one by one. It was all downhill and the trail was pretty wet and slippery. The rain forest was really beautiful and we eventually reached La Mina waterfall, where we had 30 minutes to swim in it! The water was a little cold but it was still a lot of fun to swim in a waterfall. Wish I could share the pictures now. We finished the hike were we met the buses and drove down to a local restaurant for lunch. They served us rice, beans, chicken, coleslaw, plantain, garlic bread, and flan. It was delicious! After lunch we switched to two larger busses and headed to the beach. It turned out that the beach was actually closed that day but they still let us in for a little bit. It was really beautiful and the water was really warm. I ended up falling asleep on the beach. We got back to the ship around five and I stayed on and made phone calls for the last time until Hawaii! Megan and I sat on the deck and watched the ship pull away a little after 11pm and then headed to bed.
Tuesday was the first day of B day classes so I had Finance and Sacred Spaces. So far they don’t seem too bad. My sacred spaces class doesn’t have any tests the whole semester, just papers. So that will make finals week a little easier! I signed up for some more trips at the different countries. Wednesday we had to fill out paperwork to enter the different countries on our itinerary which took a good amount of time. Later that night we found out of we got the trips we wanted that we signed up for on Tuesday. The only one I didn’t get was the service project in South Africa were SAS helps build a Habitat for Humanity house, but I was really disappointed that I didn’t get that one. The ones I did get were an architecture and urban development trip in Salvador that I need for my sacred spaces class, a trip to Itaparcia Island (also in Brazil), a trip that explores the coastal environments near Salvador for my geology class, a trip with Operation Hunger in South Africa, and a four day trip to Beijing with the University of International Business and Economics. Now it’s Thursday and there’s not too much going on, so I hope to have a lot more updates after Brazil! We will be there from Tuesday through Saturday.

Quick update..

2008-01-23T05:06:00.000-08:00

It's Wednesday morning and I'm going to be boarding the ship in less that two hours!! After my last post yesterday we actually went down to the beach and laid out for a while but the sun decided to disappear again so we walked back to town and got lunch. We checked out the straw market next and then walked over to a pirate museum but it was a little too expensive to go in. So we headed to the Hilton and walked around...it was really pretty! The concierge pointed us towards a place to get some rum cake. It was actually a rum cake factory with free samples, but they tasted way too strong. There was a grocery store next door so we picked up a few things and headed back to the hotel. Nothing to exciting the rest of the night, but for now we're gonna finish getting ready get some breakfast and head to the ship... I'm so excited!!

Hello from the Bahamas!

2008-01-22T08:16:00.000-08:00

So I'm here in the Bahamas...Finally!!!

All day Sunday was spent packing all of my stuff into two big suitcases. We left for the airport around 7:45 and made it in pretty good time. When I checked my two bags I ended up having to pay $50 because one of them weighed 65 lbs...woops. Then shortly after Megan showed up and I waited for her to check her stuff before we headed to the terminal. We were there a good three hours before our plane was going to take off and we made it through security in about 15 minutes, so we sat around for quite a while talking and trying to do a crossword puzzle. We were hoping our plane would be kind of empty so we could lie down across some seats and sleep, but that was not the case. The plane was actually overbooked, so there was now a single empty seat. At least we go to sit together, but I was only able to fall asleep for maybe an hour and a half.
Eventually we landed in Georgia around 7 am local time and headed straight to Cinnabon for some breakfast! Then luckily our next plane was leaving from the same area so we just walked over to the terminal and sat down for the next two hours. We met two fellow SASers Tom and Kara. Before I knew it the plane was boarding and the moment I sat down I fell asleep. I woke up briefly when the plane took off but fell right back asleep. Next thing I knew they were making an announcement that we had to fill out paperwork that we would need to enter the Bahamas, so I woke up and we filled them out. All I could see out the window was clouds until right before we landed. Then I saw the most beautiful water I have ever seen! It felt like it was taking forever to land, but finally we landed and got off the plane.
We got off with passport in hand and walked toward immigration where I got my very first stamp…Yay!! Then we tried to find our luggage. There were two different carousels and nobody knew which one our luggage would be coming on. So we walked back and for between the two and it seemed like an hour went by before we found Megan’s first bag. Right after we found her second one the carousel stopped with none of my bags to be seen. About 15 minutes later it turned back on and both my bags showed up thankfully. We piled Megan and my bags onto a cart along with Kara’s, who we met in Atlanta. The taxi ride to the hotel was about 10 minutes, on the left hand side of the road, which felt very strange! We got our room on the 5th floor and it’s actually pretty nice! We have a very nice view of the ocean, here are some pictures I took from the room this morning…

The weather when we got here was pretty bad. It was really windy and raining. Once we were at the hotel we had to take a little nap because we were exhausted. We decided we would head to the Atlantis for some dinner so we had cab come pick us up. Our driver seemed to have a little road rage, but we made it in once piece. The Atlantis is soooo amazing! We walked around for a bit and found the aquariums, which were so cool! Here we are..

Once we found the restaurant we were looking for we realized it was going to take way to long to get a table so we remembered there was a Johnny Rockets somewhere close so we asked someone how to get there. We had to walk through the rain but it wasn’t too far, and the hamburgers were amazing. We then walked around the hotel some more and tried to find the slides. I tried to take some pictures but it was too dark by that time. Here’s one of me out front though…

We caught a cab back and got stuck in some pretty bad traffic. Let me just say if you ask your driver about his craziest cab story, be ready for a really crazy answer… I was relieved when we were back to our hotel. I was still so tired from the trip I went to bed really early and slept for twelve hours! We got up and headed down for the $4 continental breakfast, which wasn’t the greatest but it worked. We walked down to the beach to try and get a glimpse of the explorer! In this picture you can see the two big cruise ships on the left and then the little one you can only see a little bit of is our ship.

That picture was taken from the beach right in front of the hotel. While we were down the we met the cutest dog! He followed us for a really long time when we went walking.

We tried to walk down to the ship and we got pretty close but were't able to get any pictures. Right as we got there one of the other cruise ship was unloading and there were a ton of people. We looked around in some shops and then headed back to the hotel where I am now to get online and update our blogs :) The suns coming out now so maybe we'll head back out! Hopefully my next post will be from the ship!

Email me!!

2008-01-17T18:27:00.000-08:00

I meant to mention this earlier... the email I will be using while I am gone is kneveux@gmail.com so I hope to hear from everyone :)

The preparation is overwhelming!!

2008-01-16T17:16:00.000-08:00

I got back today from my last trip to San Diego before leaving, it was really hard to say goodbye to my family and friends down there. I did get a lot accomplished while I was there… I got bathing suits, clothes, socks, bug spray, an amazingly soft blanket from brookstone, school supplies, a ton of different things from the pharmacy for anything that could possibly go wrong, a nice little white board so people can leave me messages at my room, magnets because that’s the only way to hang things in the room, and even found a place in the mall to get currency for China, Japan, Malaysia, India and Brazil! I also got my hair done and a manicure and pedicure one last time. I was also able to finally get my prescriptions for the next 4 months…what a relief! And I had to call credit card companies to let them know I would be in all these countries.

Friday was my last day at work which was really nice!! But it was sad to say goodbye to everyone. I’m picking up my w2 tomorrow so I can file my taxes before I leave since I won’t be getting back till after the deadline. I still have quiet a few things on my shopping list and the real trick is going to be figuring out how to fit all this stuff in my two suitcases. I have less than 4 days and I don’t feel ready at all! It still doesn’t even feel real!

I will be traveling to the Bahamas with Megan who is also from CLU, so I wanted to share her blog… http://meganatsea.blogspot.com/ I also have some links listed on the right hand side of the blog which are pretty neat so be sure to check them out. I made a world clock page that shows the exact time of each the places I will be at, so I think that might come in handy. I was actually able to find a watch that I could set for the time back home as well as where I am… I love it! But anyways that’s all the boring stuff for now, I'll be boarding the ship in a week & will hopefully have some great stories to share :)

Some videos for your enjoyment...

2008-01-06T20:55:00.000-08:00

It's 2008!! Happy new year everyone :) I can't believe there's only 2 weeks until I leave. As I have been researching I found this 3 part video series made by a student that went on the spring 2006 voyage which has almost all the same stops as mine. So check them out if you want an idea of what I'm in for!

Back in 2005 a semester at sea ship got hit by a 50 ft rogue wave and the weather channel made a storm stories episode about it, here it is if you want to watch...

I'm leaving the US a month from tomorrow!

2007-12-19T19:15:00.000-08:00

So I just wanted to give an update on everything as of right now...
Today I got my passport back with my visas in it! I'm so thankful it came already because I have heard a lot of stories about students not getting them until the day before they were leaving. It's so cool to look at the visas, it makes everything seem more real. I also signed up for three SAS trips last Wednesday. The ones I picked were a trip to the Taj Mahal in India, a three day safari in South Africa, and a trip to a bioluminescent bay in Puerto Rico. You probably haven't heard of a bioluminescent bay before, so go to http://biobay.com/ and check out the pictures because I'm not sure how to explain it. Basically when you move in the water at night it glows a bright blue color... I will sign up for more trips when I'm on the ship, but these ones had to be decided on before we left. I also got my final grades in for last semester and I ended up with 2 A's, a B, and a B+ , so not too bad. And I found out my Mom is going to come meet me in Florida at the end of my trip, so I'm really happy about that! That's all the updates I have for now.

Welcome to my blog!!

2007-12-01T09:24:00.001-08:00

As many of you have heard in January I will be leaving for Semester at Sea, only 53 short more days!!! I will be traveling on a ship (the MV Explorer) around the world in 106 days with about 600 other college students. We will be leaving from The Bahamas and making stops in Puerto Rico, Brazil, South Africa, Mauritius, India, Malaysia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Hawaii, Costa Rica, and the journey ends in Florida. Here is a picture of the ship and what my room will look like:

First I think it is important to explain how I got to this point. Around June I became very interested in studying abroad and I had heard a few other students at school talking about the program. I had looked at the site a few times and it just seemed so incredible to be able to see so many different places during a semester at school. With the high price tag I never thought I would ever be able to do it, but I thought I would just mention it to my parents to see what they thought. I am so lucky and thankful that they decided to help make this trip a reality.

From that moment I began researching what I had to do to get on the ship in the spring. I filled out the application, found a professor to be a reference as well as a family friend, I wrote and essay on the port of Africa and their devastation with HIV, and sent in a copy of my transcript and some other forms from my school. In less than a month I found out that I had been accepted!!!

After that I began several steps to get ready for my trip. I went down to the post office and applied for my passport! After finally receiving it in the mail I had to send it back out to a travel document agency that would help me get travel Visas for China, India, and Brazil. I met with a travel doctor and got three vaccinations, well one was actually in pill form which was awesome, and the other two didn’t hurt as much as I thought they would. I let my work know that January 11^th would be my last day, and thankfully they are going to take me back as soon as I get home in May. I booked a flight On January 20^th to the Bahamas with a friend from school that will also be going on the trip, and we also booked a room at the Quality Inn in Nassau for the two nights before the ship leaves. It’s not the nicest hotel but we can go over to the Atlantis Resort anytime to hang out, which is an amazing place from the pictures online.

Next I had to register for my classes. Although I’m sure this sounds like a big vacation to a lot of people, there will be classes. The way this works is all days at sea we have class and it does not matter if it is a Saturday, but thankfully all the days we are in port there are no classes held. So here is a description of the classes I will be taking:

SEMS 101: Global Studies

Professors: Dan Ehnbom and Tatjana Good

Global Studies is an interdisciplinary course that focuses on the countries visited and is tailored especially to meet the global and comparative approach of Semester at Sea. In addition to providing basic information about the countries on the itinerary, Global Studies also provides a meaningful framework by which to compare data, examine issues, and develop concepts. The Spring 2008 course will highlight the importance of understanding pilgrimage and religious centers as a way of understanding diverse parts of the world. Participants learn how to understand cultural and social phenomena with which they are constantly coming into contact during the semester and to highlight both commonalities and differences from one society to another. Global Studies equips participants with observational and analytical skills for encountering societies different from their own, and different from each other, a key factor in facilitating the integration of class work and field work for all courses.

ARTH 209Z: Sacred Spaces

Discipline: History of Art & Architecture

Professor Marion Dolan

This course is designed to study selected ancient, medieval and modern sacred sites that have been painted, sculpted, decorated and ritually aligned to the heavens. This class will concentrate in particular on the outstanding monuments that will be visited, or are located in the areas of our itinerary. For general background, the course will begin with the magnificent cave paintings and extend to megalithic monuments, and early temples and religious sites in Egypt, Greece and Rome. We will examine the sacred architecture and the different forms it takes, particularly its placement in respect to the heavens, as most religious structures, until modern times, were ritually aligned to specific cosmic events. We will investigate various aspects and features of these sacred sites such as; location, construction techniques, sacred geometry, and history. The symbolic, and sometimes enigmatic, art work that decorates sacred sites is a vital part of the course. As distant viewers, we cannot attain a full understanding of the deeper levels of meaning or know exactly how these important sites functioned. But as we discover more about these sacred places and the vast amount of time, material, resources and energy that were required to create and maintain them, we learn much about human history and about ourselves.

COMM 371N: Managerial Finance I

Discipline: Business/Commerce

Professor James M. Andre

Sound financial management is of critical importance to every organization. We will study the growth of China and India as they become a major part of the global economy. Europe and the former eastern block are also big players in global development. Our goal is to provide you with an understanding of financial statements and the analytical tools available for use in properly managing and adding value to an organization. We want to expand your knowledge, develop your analytical skills, and improve your financial decision making abilities. This course is intended to provide you with an overview of the basic concepts and principles of financial management, with particular emphasis on company financial analysis, risk, rates of return, and valuation. There will be some discussion of international finance and corporate social responsibility in the context of corporate objective functions. This survey course will focus on theories, concepts, and principles and will incorporate the use of technology in the form of financial calculators and spreadsheets. Method of evaluation: short quizzes, midterm and final exams, term project, and class attendance and participation.

SEMS 274: Our Restless Earth: Fundamentals of Geology

Discipline: Geology

Professor Bryan Dorsey

A study of the Restless Earth builds on a framework composed of multiple physical science facets that we collectively call geology. We depend on geologic resources to sustain our society: for example, mineral materials from gravel to gold; energy sources in coal, petroleum, hydroelectric, nuclear and geothermal forms; transportation on rivers and oceans' water from glacial ice to subterranean aquifers; and, growing in importance, the use of geologic structures as dumps for our urban wastes. At times, we are vulnerable to natural hazards, such as earthquakes, which have great influence on land use practices. That is why it is so critical to learn how to organize our use of the Earth's geologic features. Here we focus on: the earth and its many rock forms; on processes that shape geologic features on both continents and ocean basins, whether systematic, chaotic or catastrophic. Lastly, we develop theories that describe and explain the continually evolving earth.

Global Studies is required for everyone on the trip and is held everyday, while the other classes alternate on A and B days. Each class lasts an hour and 15 minutes and can only hold 20 students (besides global studies).

Next I went out and bought my luggage, which is hot pink! I was hoping the bright color would help keep my luggage from getting lost... And I also bought a nice travel backpack to use for overnight trips in various countries. I bought a new digital camera which I should be getting any day now in the mail. On Thursday night I went to a Study Abroad dinner at school for all the students who would be abroad in various places in the spring, which were about 65 students. It was nice to get to meet other people going through the same type of thing and I also found out there are 3 other students from CLU going on Semester at Sea in the spring, one of them being Megan who I already knew. At the end of the dinner we sat down and talk with CLU students who had already gone on SAS and they showed us a scrapbook of their trip. Here you can see a picture of everyone studying abroad:

Now at this point there is only 53 days left for me to prepare and there is so much left to do. Right now I am just trying to focus on the last two weeks of the fall semester, which are jam-packed with work! I still need to order my books, which will be conveniently shipped to my room on the ship. I have to register for the pre-sale field programs which are the trips ran by SAS in the different ports of call. I know that I definitely want to do a safari in South Africa, but I haven’t decided on anything else because they are so expensive! A lot of them can be done independently, but I’m kind of nervous about doing some of the stuff on my own. I still have not gotten my passport back with my visas, but I’m hoping to get it back soon… One girl I talked to from CLU said she didn’t get hers back until the day before she left for the Bahamas, which makes me a little nervous, but I’m trying not to worry yet. There are several other things but I don’t want to bore you with my to do list.

I created this blog to keep everyone updated on what I am doing because once I leave it is going to be very hard for me to stay in contact with everyone. There will be internet on the ship but it is very slow and after using the 200 minutes included in the tuition, the cost is 40 cents a minute. I plan on probably creating a new email account to use on the trip, but you can also post a comment on my blog that I will be able to read. My goal is to at least post something after each port. Another way to stay updated is the MSN message board. On previous voyages this is where a lot of the parents get together and share information about their kids that are on the current voyage, and a lot of alumni get involved with answering questions as well.

You can also send me mail on the ship, which I would absolutely love!!! Here is the instructions from the Semester at Sea Website:

Important Reminder: Mail to those aboard ship should be addressed as follows:

Name of Person

C/O: Explorer

Arrival Date

Port Agent Address

Currently the U.S. Post Office recommends sending international mail at least two weeks in advance. Please keep in mind that mail service in other countries may vary. Letters should be sent Airmail only. Please do not send any mail to the Institute for Shipboard Education or to the University of Virginia to be forwarded. Do not enclose currency in the mail.

Please do not send packages to the ship - Excessive duty is charged in some countries. In many instances, packages are not delivered to the ship. Packages may be held in customs, or at a local post office, and the recipient aboard ship is never notified. If you send packages, you do so at your own risk.

Please note: The agents listed below are not contracted by the Institute for Shipboard Education, but by the ship's management company. Therefore, the Institute cannot assume liability for the actions, or lack thereof, taken by those listed below regarding receipt and delivery of mail and faxes.

PORT	ADDRESS OF PORT AGENT	SUGGESTED AIRMAIL DATE
San Juan, PUERTO RICO Phone: 1 787 982 8888 Fax: 1 787 982 8890	Cruise Plus Service & Sales 1760 Fernandez Juncos Avenue San Juan, PUERTO RICO, 00909	January 12
Salvador, BRAZIL Phone: 55 71 3241 4990 Fax: 55 71 3243 5633	Oceanus Agencia Maritima Av. Estados Unidos, 555, Room 712 40015-010 Salvador, BAHIA-BRASIL	January 22
Cape Town, SOUTH AFRICA Phone: 27 21 419 8660 Fax: 27 21 421 6984	John T. Rennie & Sons PO Box 702, 1 Thibault Square 8000 Cape Town, SOUTH AFRICA	February 5
Port Louis, MAURITIUS Phone: 230 202 70 40 Fax: 230 208 5814	Ireland Blyth Limited Shipping Operations Department No 6 Dr Ferriere Street Port Louis, MAURITIUS	March 16
Chennai, INDIA Phone: 91 44 252 12032 Fax: 91 44 252 43813	J.M. Baxi & Co. 3^rd Floor, Clive Battery Complex 4 & 4A, Rajaji Salai Chennai 600 001, INDIA	February 26
Penang, MALAYSIA Phone: 60 4 2623 245 Fax: 60 4 2627 989	Inchcape Shipping Services SDN 4^th Floor Unit 4B Wisma Saw Chong Thuah 39-c, Pengkalan Weld 10300 Penang, MALAYSIA	March 5
Ho Chi Minh City, VIETNAM Phone: 84 8 823 1052 Fax: 84 8 824 2996	General Forwarding Agency 5^th Floor Osic Building 8 Nguyen Hue Avenue D. 1, Ho Chi Minh City, VIETNAM	March 13
HONG KONG Phone: 852 2746 7312 Fax: 852 2744 3240	Inchcape Shipping Services (HK) Ltd. Units 1802-1805, 18^th Floor N^o 3 Lockhart Road Wanchai, HONG KONG - CHINA	March 20
Shanghai, CHINA Phone: 86 21 6323 1350 Fax: 86 21 6329 1519	Penavico Shanghai 3/F 13 Zhong Shan Road (E 1) Shanghai 200002, P.R. CHINA	March 24
Kobe, JAPAN Phone: 81 78 391 3046 Fax: 81 78 391 3105	Inchcape Shipping Services (Japan) Ltd. Kenryu Bldg, Room 502 6, Kaigan-dori, Chuo-ku Kobe-shi, Hygo-ken 650-0024, JAPAN	March 28
Honolulu, HAWAII Phone: 1 808 599 8604 Fax: 1 808 599 1950	Inchcape Shipping Services 521 Ala Moana Blvd. Suite 256 Honolulu, HI 96813	April 8
Puntarenas, COSTA RICA Phone: 506 440 2000 Fax: 506 442 8862	R. Smyth & Co S.A. 500 M. Norte del Super Santiago Rio Segundo Alajuela, COSTA RICA	April 26

This information can also be found HERE. It also helps to put my room number on the letter, so I will give that to everyone as soon as possible, but I will not know my room number until the day I board, and I won't even know my roommate until I walk into my room and meet her!

So I think that is about everything I can think of right now, so I just wanted to end with this cute comic...